Ideas

Build the excitement the night before a celebration with a box full of all the essentials for a cosy sleepover. This new tradition has become a popular way to kick start the festivities and treat everyone to a special night in.

 Find the perfect present for the person who knows exactly what they like with our gift guide.

This season, why not take the stress out of hosting by getting everyone involved? A group of friends show us how they like to do it in their communal home…

‘Velvet catches the light in a way that can make a flat surface come alive,’ says designer Ola Wihlborg. Here are some of the reasons to love velvet right now…

Give your gift wrapping a life beyond Christmas – by making it part of your gift.

Design your space to encourage togetherness and play. See how this family uses an open-plan layout, cosy textiles and colour to create a shareable space that suits all their needs.

Build your children’s confidence in the kitchen with this fun, festive baking idea that lets them take charge – and enjoy the taste of their labour!

Per and Hannah live with their three children in a house, while grandpa lives in a small house in their garden. Welcome to their home, where cosiness rules, childhood is celebrated, and young imaginations can run free.

There’s nothing like lighting candles to get the mood just right. Try these tips to help you create a feeling of calm and cosiness.

Greeting a guest can be done in many ways. Here are three living rooms that each have their special way – and style – to offer a heart-warming, welcoming atmosphere.

Decorate your Christmas tree with style, using these three trends from Marie Tenglund, Interior Designer at IKEA UK and Ireland.

Create an inviting atmosphere in your home this winter with these stylish seasonal table settings

Use these tips to bring the festive feeling home with a perfectly decorated Christmas tree from Marie Tenglund, Interior Designer at IKEA UK and Ireland.

Three quick but impactful ideas that set the scene for a special occasion.

Thanks to LEDs, lighting chains are more versatile than ever. Here are handy tips on how to make them a holiday hit in your home.

Marrit and Jelmer have spent nearly four years renovating their house room by room. Along the way, they’ve had a daughter, Mia, and found new passions. For them, home is an ongoing journey – and one worth celebrating.

Florist Łukasz Marcinkowski shows us how to create three easy, naturally beautiful winter displays at home.

In Tromsø, Norway, the residents don’t see the sun for two months during the winter. Yet they seem to know the secret to happiness. Find out how you too can fight the winter blues.

Why not make a talking point of your home with eclectic and light-hearted decorations? Take your pick from this edit of fanciful buys…  

Winter is always a good time to think about lighting and the feel-good difference it can make to life indoors. To get you inspired, here’s our pick of ideas from homes we’ve visited.

When you’ve unboxed your new buy, don’t bin the cardboard! With a little imagination, paint and fabric, you can turn it into a showstopping puppet theatre. Watch the video to see how easy it is!

‘Our style is a mix of eclecticism and urban features, with a bit of a Berlin feeling,’ says Radek of the 19th century apartment he shares with his partner, Łukasz. Step inside…

This winter, keep the dark at bay and create a homey feel with simple lighting solutions – from rechargeable bulbs to swapping your lampshades.

The details make your home. Here we’ve used the same room in two settings, letting small, easy changes create two completely different styles. See how you can do it, step by step.

IKEA Foundation puts every child’s right to play at the heart of its Good Cause campaign, Let’s Play for Change. November 20 is Universal Children’s Day. See how partnering with six leading organisations is making a difference worldwide.

Getting the family back into the school routine can be tough. But you can beat the school rush by creating a station for breakfast, lunch and after-school snacks. You can even get the kids to help out.

It's finally here...British Summer time! So, get yourself outside and make the most of it while the sun is shining. Hosting your own BBQ party doesn't need to be complicated. Checkout our tips for throwing together an outdoor BBQ party.

Between work, helping the kids with their homework and trying to fit in the odd moments to just do nothing, there’s figuring out what to make for dinner. There’s gotta be an easier way. Heck, we say just leave it up to chance and go with the flow. Here’s how.

Slouch onto your comfiest chair. Sink into a pile of cosy cushions on the floor. This holiday season, come together for an informal family meal on a picnic blanket in the living room.

The new GRANBODA nest of tables has three small tables that can be moved around to wherever you need them, while its cool, modern design offers extra surface space and storage for tidying away the little things that always seem to go missing…

Trends come and go every season. It can be hard (and kind of exhausting) to keep up with all the changes, and even harder to figure out how to work them in at home. So we’ve rounded up the three biggest colour trends for the fall, and a few simple ideas for how to pull them off.

If you spend your day in your home office, you need the place to work for you. See how our interiors stylist helps this entrepreneur and crafter to make her home office organised and inspiring…

Our challenge in this open floor plan? Make the kitchen blend in with the living room. So we made all the cabinets look as much like furniture as possible.

‘With more of us living in cities, not everyone has their own outside space or time to tend to a garden,’ says stylist Carl Braganza. ‘Indoor options like these three bring the same benefits with less effort.’

Pretty much no one looks forward to the morning rush. Especially when you’re sharing the bathroom with your parents. And your siblings. Nope, no one’s into that. Here’s how we suggest revamping the routine. We even had a few tough critics (teenage girls) weigh in.

With a bit of imagination, a clever layout and multifunctional furniture, even the tiniest shared bedroom can be a great place to play. Stylist Sam Grigg showed one family that sharing doesn’t have to mean double the trouble – it can mean double the fun! 

You know how it is. The sun is shining, you head outdoors, and 100 000 people also have the same idea. A big enough crowd can make even the most social of us crave a little privacy. But you don’t have to be banished back to the backyard. We took the IKEA Idea’s team mobile to test out a couple of ways to make the outdoors your own (at least for the day).

Avoid a packed to-do list in December by getting your space organised early. Rethink what’s essential and keep stress at bay by focusing on key areas. We’ll show you how with our seven easy tips!

There are lots of simple ways to create a natural oasis at home, even in the middle of the city. For Karin and Cord, growing is at the heart of their fifth-floor home in an apartment block built for greener living, which they helped to design. ‘We’ve created our own microclimate,’ says Karin. ‘Lots of bees and birds find their way up here.’

Want to know a secret to living more sustainably? Take some new technology and add in an old school approach to food. That’s it. Running an eco-friendly kitchen has never been easier.

Make your room work harder by freeing up some of that precious space with clever storage and multi-purpose furniture.

Think you don’t have space for any more storage? See your home in a new way and think again. You don’t need more space to store your stuff, you just have to be creative with the space you’ve got.

 ‘Using your walls is an easy way to show off who you are and what you love,’ says IKEA decoration range communicator Anna Ohlin. ‘You can create a collage out of anything, from family photos to patterns you like – and add to it or change it whenever you like, to reflect the true you.’  

As much as we love summer, we gotta admit we’re big fans of ‘fall’. Come see how our stylist Amanda brings a stylish autumn feel to the living room. Seasonal colours, atmospheric lights, warm textiles. It’s all here.

Good intentions are great, but knowing that something is good for us doesn’t make it easy to do. In an attempt to get into a positive routine, journalist Helen Bazuaye took inspiration from Leo Babauta, author of the blog Zen Habits: ‘The key to forming a habit is starting each day.’ Here’s to starting!

Want to get away without leaving home? Taste the world bite by bite. Our team dreamed up and tested out a tapas-y, travel-inspired food fest. Recipe developer and food stylist Louise Ljung created recipes based on places and dishes we love. Our interior designer Nathalie Kamkum made table settings to match, too. We think it’d be great for families, friends, neighbours, work lunches, whatever, especially as a low-key, no-stress potluck. No packing. Just snacking.

Outsmart last minute stress and huge to-do lists with our six deco tips that you can set in motion today! The best part? They’re long-lasting, so no need to clear them away until you want to.

We love getting the inside scoop from our stylists, and this time we asked one of our favourites, Saša Antić, to create a living room from scratch.