Playful Ikea design hacks create different looks
Inexpensive can look expensive
Who among us has not wanted to rebel against Ikea?
So clean, so orderly and so cheerful about both, the Swedish mega-retailer of convenience furniture is just begging for mischief.
For most of us, ignoring the designated paths at the local store in favour of taking a sneaky shortcut is sufficiently rebellious. Others are putting their Ikea subordination to more constructive use.
Ikea hacking is the practice of making your own creations from the company’s products — another way to get the most bang for your flat-pack buck — whether it’s by reupholstering the modestly priced Poang chair or turning Pax wardrobes into something that mimics built-in cabinetry.
A website called Ikea Hackers provides regular doses of inspiration, and the company itself has even embraced the phenomenon: The 2013 catalogue features hacks of its own, including one dresser repainted with wild swirls of colour and another recovered with fabric.
Jumping on the bandwagon, the popular design blog, Apartment Therapy, rounded up 10 hacker versions of the simple Ikea Lack table.
Clearly, Ikea hacking can create many design possibilities.
A bedside table in a magazine lured Lindsay Stephenson into the world of Ikea hacking. Stephenson, who runs an online stationery shop, flipped to the sources page expecting to be disappointed by the high cost. She was intrigued to discover that the stylist had painted an Ikea Rast threedrawer chest ($39.99) and put nice brass pulls on it.
“IKEA FURNITURE TENDS TO HAVE FINISHES THAT PEOPLE ARE FAMILIAR WITH …” JENNIFER FLORES
Stephenson figured out how to imitate the job, posted the result at her blog at aubreyandlindsay.blogspot.com and “it kind of went viral.”
With that first project, Stephenson captured the essence of everyday Ikea hacking: making the inexpensive look expensive. She and husband Aubrey Silverberg have since graduated to much larger hacks, keeping that philosophy in mind. They installed a new kitchen this year that uses Ikea cabinetry but adds elements such as filler panels and crown moulding to give it the tailored look of custom work.
While a custom kitchen would have cost $15,000 to $20,000, Stephenson says, the Ikea cabinets cost around $4,000.
“Mind you, that’s not apples to apples,” she notes. The Ikea kitchen was a DIY job. “Keep in mind that $4,000 doesn’t include building or installing, measuring, pots of coffee … I would definitely say it’s a lot more work.”
Jennifer Flores has also made low-cost Ikea furnishings look posher than they would as free-standing units by attaching them to the walls of her house with filler panels. Her daughter Chloe’s room, for example, takes cabinets from the Pax system and disguises them with panels that make them appear built-in. (The versatile Pax product line is a popular choice among Ikea hackers.)
Flores sees hacking as a way to take advantage of Ikea’s low costs while minimizing the chances of easy product recognition.
“Ikea furniture tends to have finishes that people are familiar with, so you don’t want it to always jump out at you. You pick and choose where you use it. I think that’s the key to it to making it look a bit more expensive,” says Flores, a social media consultant who credits husband Sean Stanwick, an architectural intern, with making their Ikea hacks work on a practical level.
“I guess that’s the thing with Ikea — everyone loves how functional and accessible it is, but they don’t love that it’s ubiquitous and it kind of screams big box,” says Kyle Lin, a derivatives analyst for a major pension plan and an avid do-it-yourselfer.
Most Ikea hackers, paradoxically, do not shy away from being open about their deceptively cost-conscious projects.
“I would never try to pass it off as (custom),” Stephenson says of her hacks.