Our view on product safety
At IKEA, we want to create a better everyday life for the many people. And we believe a safer life is a better life – for you, your family, and the world around us. We draw on over 80 years of experience of everyday life at home to make sure we design and develop products that make home a safer place.
We believe your home should be the safest place in the world. We use our experience to help you achieve this. Over 80 years of learning from life at home and developing products have taught us what works and what does not. For every product we create, we consider your safety throughout the entire process – from the materials used to the daily use of the product.
Everyday life is unexpected
Our products get used in creative ways. That’s why our product safety risk assessment considers intended – and unintended – uses of every product we sell. We interact with our customers around the world to learn how they use and experience our products. We also participate in networks – including over 100 standard committees globally – focused on product requirements and compliance. These real-life insights help guide us in our work going forward.
Testing, guaranteed
At IKEA, we perform over a million product tests every year. We have IKEA Test Labs at our home in Älmhult, Sweden, and China, with a combined test area of around 20,000 m2. Here we make sure that our products are durable and safe to use. We also work with other independent accredited test labs around the world. And we don’t just test during development but continually throughout the lifetime of a product. This helps us understand how our products perform over time in everyday life at home.
Our standards
There are laws and standards that all products must meet for every market. That is the benchmark, but we want to do even more. We have our standards, which are often more demanding than the regulatory ones. We aim to have one of the most rigorous approaches to product testing for home furnishings in the world. You can trust that we have put all our knowledge and learnings into every product produced, from raw materials to design and durability. And when we see a need, we act to make improvements.
Making our products better and better
Our standards apply both before and after a product reaches you. Our bed linen, for example, doesn’t contain anything that isn’t safe to have close to your skin. We believe that’s how all bed linen should be. If a chemical could be harmful to you or your environment, we don’t think it should be in your home. We don’t just follow legislation; we act when we identify potentially harmful chemicals. And if we identify an unsafe product, we recall it and won’t bring it back unless we’ve managed to redesign it into a safer and even better product.
A safer life at home is about continuous improvement. We can keep improving things, and at IKEA, we think we can always learn something new. Our commitment to you is to constantly strive to make our products safe for you, your family, and your environment.
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