We love to talk about materials, and we know that the IKEA customer does too! But what are the words compared to the real tactile experience? To lift your senses and bring more tactile surfaces into the store and your home, we use different materials that are soft, hard, sleek, velvety, smooth, rough, or otherwise nice to the touch.
Here you can learn some interesting and basic facts about our materials, and how we, at IKEA, work with them.
Here you can learn some interesting and basic facts about our materials, and how we, at IKEA, work with them.
Choosing materials
For us, it is about making responsible decisions. When we’re not able to use renewable resources, we aim for recycled or recyclable ones. In addition to renewable materials such as bamboo and natural fibers, we love to work with recycled wood, plastic, paper, and metal.
Textiles
Browsing through our furniture and accessories, you can feel wool, hemp, jute, linen, viscose, ramie, sisal, polyester, and lyocell. Yet our favourite material is cotton. It is natural, renewable and used for our most popular products, from sofas and cushions to bed sheets and lampshades.
Wood
Solid wood is one of the main materials we use and an essential part of our heritage. All wood used in IKEA products is sourced from responsibly managed forests. To have a positive impact on the planet, we also use bamboo, which is a fast-growing, renewable, and very durable material.
Natural fibres
Banana fibres, rattan, seagrass and water hyacinth are among our most appreciated natural fibres. They are ideal for braiding or weaving into baskets, place mats or furniture. We also use cork. As it is elastic and compressible, cork offers a soft and warm feeling making it suitable for table covers, seating, etc.
Paper and cardboard
All furniture you buy at IKEA come in flat packaging made of cardboard, and some of our products are made out of paper themselves. We use fine paper, paperboard, tissue paper and are very proud of our invention called cellulose board. It is a lightweight construction of recycled paper, mostly used for room dividers.
Metal
We use different metals in our production, but they all have something in common. They are easy to recycle. We love a hardwearing, durable, corrosion resistant stainless steel and often choose aluminium for its low density, light weight, and ability to be recycled indefinite number of times.