IKEA was founded in the 1940s, so why are you showing no catalogues from before 1951?
The first catalogue did not come out until 1951. Before that, IKEA was a mail order company that didn’t sell furniture, but pens, clocks, electric razors, wallets and bags. At that time, the range was only presented in a small mail order brochure called ikéa-nytt (literally ikéa news). Sometimes it was distributed as a supplement in farming paper Jordbrukarnas Föreningsblad, which reached hundreds of thousands of people in the Swedish countryside. From autumn 1948 Ingvar Kamprad started including furniture in the range, and things quickly grew from there. In the 1950 ikéa-nytt, as many as six of the 18 pages featured furniture. And when you look at the 1951 catalogue, you’ll see that there are no more pens and wallets. Ingvar Kamprad was now truly focusing on home furnishing, and shelving the rest.
Browse through all issues of ikéa-nytt.
Browse IKEA catalogues through the ages, reflecting different eras and lifestyles - a goldmine for the nostalgic, design enthusiasts and history buffs.
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By galfarragem 2025-10-0718:385 reply I'd happily pay for the traditional physical IKEA yearly catalog. I suspect that if they sold it in-store for a few euros (€2?) just to cover printing costs, many people would buy it. It's more than a product list, it’s a cultural artifact, offering a window into the aesthetics, values, and lifestyle of its time. I still keep their old catalogs, and I’m not alone.
Fun fact - Getty Images used to send physical albums of their stock photo collections.
It was some 25 years ago, I was doing freelance for an ad agency, and while visiting the office and waiting for my appointment to finalize some paperwork I was browsing through these. When my guy finally showed up to pick me up he asked if I liked them and said - you can get these for free, just write them. So I did and they mailed me 10kg worth of albums. Just like that.
Just a cool memory from the past. Back then internet wasn't that rich, mobile phones were novelty, and when you visited a musuem or gallery and liked you bought a massive album to hold on to your memories.
These days, when visiting such places (think sistine chapel) I don't even bother to do pictures at all. If I want to recall something I can find endless stream of top quality pictures made by professionals with equipment worth as much as my car and in clinical settings, with no crowds and perfect lighting.
By hooskerdu 2025-10-089:24 Not saying this is you, but I’m reminded of a story of a woman who took a ton of photos of vacations - all the sights. But upon the death of her husband realized she never captured the people with her
By xattt 2025-10-0817:58 My university had bound catalogues of “letterpress blocks” you could order for letterpresses.
These were from about 50-100 years ago, and were great for scanning in and converting to vector art as various design elements. Usually these were artistic flourishes to include inline with text.
The one that stands out for me was engraved drawing of a fish that would not be out of place as a large print.
By bryanrasmussen 2025-10-089:031 reply I mean obviously the color space of most images you find online is still RGB although that is slowly changing, but until it changes print versions will probably be higher quality.
The colors afforded by your phone or camera probably have richer colors than is afforded by images you download of the place online, but may also be dependent on what you're doing and your camera settings.
By InfinityByTen 2025-10-0813:37 I've known about Ikea for just one-third of my life. It's only last few years that it has been in the country of my origin and only this year in my home city. I love the repository of design, aesthetics, technology, advertising, and sociology these catalogs can be. I'm sure you could write a book "titled design through the decades from an ikea lens".
It was one if not the most effective advertisement which I’ve encountered in my life. We got it freely every year with post, and I dreamed as a kid to have such houses and flats which could be seen in them. The brand stuck me so well, that it’s my go to furniture store, since I moved out from my parents. I wanted to read it again last year to have some ideas for my new flat, and I was devastated when I’ve figured out that it’s not printed anymore. Even as I’ve been continuously online for 24-25 years, a digital “version” of it will never be the same. I won’t ever read it just for fun, which we did back then so many times (my whole family), that it became utterly damaged until the next year’s edition came. I would easily pay for it.
I remember paging through the IKEA catalog and OTTO clothing catalog at my grandparents house in the summer. We were bored. I think this is just nostalgia. Today even if there was a print version, it wouldn't mean the same to people as it did back then. There's so much more stuff competing for your attention online all the time.
By ruszki 2025-10-087:51 Not just online. My nieces have at least 100x more physical toys than we had with my brother. I saw similar things with all of my friends with kids. Way more toys. Even in those families who are strongly anti consumerists.
By petesergeant 2025-10-087:573 reply As a kid in the UK, Argos catalogues were magical.
By throw0101d 2025-10-0811:42 > As a kid in the UK, Argos catalogues were magical.
In Canada it was Consumers Distributing (also Eaton's, Sears):
* 1992 catalog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTXbe9Mw17Q
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing
* https://www.tvo.org/article/what-happened-to-consumers-distr...
You could buy something via mail or phone, but there were also shops: you would go there, fill out a form with tiny pencils (like an old school bank form), give it to the clerk, and they'd bring it to the cashier 'from the back'.
By notahacker 2025-10-0810:39 I remember holiday catalogues the same. Then the internet came, and I assumed it would make the whole process of choosing a holiday that bit more magical
Instead we got really efficient price comparison and sometimes very useful but often gamed customer reviews...
By workmandan 2025-10-0813:24 "The laminated book of dreams!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggOa9aSG-Ow
By freddie_mercury 2025-10-0721:232 reply > And behind the scenes, work on the next catalogue had already begun – a process lasting several months and involving planning, construction of interiors, photography and filming, all led by catalogue manager Mia Olsson Tunér.
It is naive to assume printing costs are the only costs involved.
I feel comfortable assuming IKEA had a better understanding of the economic fundamentals of the catalogue than HN commenters.
No one is assuming printing costs are the only costs to produce the catalogue. The point of pricing the catalogue at printing costs is to cover the marginal cost of offering the catalogue for sale. The fixed costs of producing the calendar are incurred either way.
A company I worked for stopped doing physical catalogs too - after having done so for a very long time. The cost to produce the catalog was insane, and had quite a bit of dedicated staff working on it full-time. Making a catalog is a specialized skillset, and has little overlap with the business' core competencies, such as website administration.
Over time, the revenue attributed with the physical catalog declined year over year. People said they wanted the catalog, but it didn't translate into attributable sales. The ones that did order from the catalog were often the smallest, insignificant orders the company took in. The website and online advertising are where customers gravitated towards, and remain today.
The amount of people that actually want a physical catalog, even for IKEA, I would wager pales in comparison to the amonut of people that want to browse the catalog on their phone or tablet. Pricing changes, stock comes and goes, products get discontinued, colors/materials are changed, etc. The website is always up-to-date, the physical catalog... is not.
When I read comments like yours, I interpret them as people wanting nastolgic items more than marketing materials or ordering guides. The costs for the company are just too high to produce those anymore; well over $2 per catalog someone up-thread mentioned - we're talking more like $10-$20+ these days (not accounting for anything except print costs) for a full-color, glossy/professional catalog with hundreds of pages.
I have serious doubts IKEA printing catalogs today would garner any new business. They would give away (or perhaps sell) some copies to existing, long-time customers with a fond memory of the brand and their catalogs - and I'm afraid that's it.
By ghaff 2025-10-0815:51 I suppose on the plus side, my mailbox doesn't get completely stuffed with catalogs before Christmas every year. That aside, I do sort of miss leafing through all the catalogs I used to get.
Same way as IKEA restaurants were serving decent quality food for dimes.
It was business decision. People were thinking - we have a day off, we could go there and there, do some shopping, and then we go there for food, or we could go to the IKEA and eat there.
If you're "slave to the IKEA" and want to cherish your free day with consumerism, it was a no brainer if you wanted to shop on a budget and eat for free.
Unforntuantely, catalogues are gone and so are days of cheap food in IKEA.
By aegirth 2025-10-0821:25 > Unforntuantely, catalogues are gone and so are days of cheap food in IKEA.
Depends on where you are. my Ikea still has all the cheap food you and I remember. Could be something stateside (if you are there).
By kryptiskt 2025-10-088:09 There are other stuff that goes into it. But they still do nearly all of that for the web site, so a print catalogue in addition wouldn't be such a massive undertaking.
The problem really is the distribution costs, it used to be delivered to every home in Sweden, doing it on that scale is expensive. If they were satisfied with doing a print catalogue for the biggest fans, it would be an insignificant cost.
By BoredPositron 2025-10-0716:592 reply Woah...that brings back some memories. In a whole different timeline 22 years ago I was printing them for literal months. We did all European versions and it was 8 weeks of nothing but IKEA catalogs. They were highly optimized so for a language change we only had to switch the black cylinders. The whole IT was bonkers for the time we used SGI workstations for pre press and had like 100 bonded dial up connections for the mass of data. The pages came as TIF files and a catalogue was around 300GB. We were a rotogravure shop and did around 13m/s of 3-4 meters paper in width and around 4-5 kilometers in length. I think a whole run was 50 metric tons of paper. Good times but incredibly boring if the machine was dialed in.
By supportengineer 2025-10-0718:222 reply I don't think most people appreciate the miracle that is paper publishing.
For decades we used to have daily newspapers delivered to our doorstep, and the price was low enough that almost anyone could afford it.
By fragmede 2025-10-0721:00 And that they were set by linotype! Whenever I get annoyed at Jekyll or ruby or GitHub pages or whatever not building and needing maintenance, I think back and am suddenly grateful that my problem isn't of sorting funny shaped pieces of metal into exactly the right order.
By nine_k 2025-10-0718:38 I still regularly receive printed papers at my (building's) doorstep; they are printed in color, and completely dedicated to ads.
By PetitPrince 2025-10-087:45 > They were highly optimized so for a language change we only had to switch the black cylinders.
What an ingenious solution; I bet very few people would notice that everything is written in black(1). "Good design is invisible" indeed !
(1) except some of the product line (Ivar, Lack, etc), but those are invariant in all languages.
A bit OT, but why is ikea internet store (any country) designed to be so unusable? Lists of available components hidden in pdfs tucked in obscure menu, no way to find compatible components, search flooded with tens of thousands of "combinations" — I mean, they obviously know what they are doing. What is the goal of making it such way?
By silvestrov 2025-10-0721:542 reply Also: why can't they show all sizes of a product jusst like when choosing t-shirt size on a normal shop?
e.g. this dresser is available in many sizes but you wouldn't know from the product page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white...
At best you can then search for "STORKLINTA" but the result list has the other sizes mixed with all sorts of other products such as beds: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?q=STORKLINTA
By makeitdouble 2025-10-0723:461 reply Not to explain away Ikea's byzantine system, a difference in size usually comes with a difference in use and environment.
While a T-shirt has the same purpose in S M or L, a table isn't the same if it's lower smaller than 50cm or longer than 1.5m, or lower than 60cm or higher than 70cm. In a standard shop you'd call that a night stand, or a coffee table, or a kids' table or living room's low table etc.
If you think of it as shopping for an environment (same as half of the in-shop experience: they'll show you full rooms where you can see products fit together) it makes sense. Somewhat.
By silvestrov 2025-10-089:321 reply I agree that for tables there can be a difference in use but when IKEA has a dresser series named "HEMNES bedroom series" then that argument kind of goes out of the window.
By makeitdouble 2025-10-0810:41 But then "Hemnes bedroom series" also has beds in it...it sounds like the focus is as much on "bedroom" than "Hemnes"
https://www.ikea.com/jp/en/cat/hemnes-bedroom-series-58619/
And the other Hemnes lines include book stands, dish cabinets, TV stands.
I totally agree IKEA doesn't give a damn about series and collection consistency.
It's not super hard to back up (using the "bread crumbs" on the page you linked), to "Dressers & chests of drawers", pop down the "Series" input selector, and pick STORKLINTA. That gets you [1] which I hope shows all the dressers of that name.
[1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/chests-of-drawers-10451/?filt...
By 112233 2025-10-0816:09 Here is a page for Eket collection: https://www.ikea.lv/lv/collections/eket
Please look at it quickly and try understanding what elements are available.
Or, say, Platsa having half of the pieces called Småstad, because they kinda would also fit in kid's room. Or trying to find codenames for doors/facades/drawers of Metod or Pax.
By silvestrov 2025-10-089:301 reply I didn't see the filter because it is only shown for wide windows (over 1250px wide) or when clicking the "All filters" button and is then at the bottom of the list.
The list even isn't sorted and looks like a SELECT without order from a database.
It is really odd they don't have a (sub) category page for each of the series.
By hapidjus 2025-10-0815:17 They do have category pages but the discoverability is abysmal. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/storklinta-series-700569/
IKEA likes to find ways to get you into their physical stores because they know you’re going to end up buying more than just the items you came for.
So they have a website that sort of teases you, but isn’t actually good enough to replace the physical stores.
You’ll start on the website, but get frustrated with it and eventually just drive over to IKEA to find the items you want. And you’ll also come home with some candles, picture frames, and a couple packs of frozen meatballs.
By makeitdouble 2025-10-0723:502 reply Also to note, shipping prices are egregious compared to the product prices. In most cases shipping a single product will cost 2 or 3 times more than the product price.
They made efforts during COVID so they're obviously aware of the issue, and I'm sure they al see it as lost opportunity, but probably still don't want to eat the cost or go full Amazon and have their own centers.
TBH as a customer I'm fine with keeping in-store price low instead of subsiding the online store.
By superice 2025-10-086:02 Shipping has always been a strong point for Ikea. Just look at how efficient most of their stuff is packaged, usually into very neat rectangular packages. They can fit a ton of stuff into a small volume, which improves shipping cost a lot. Last mile will always be relatively expensive, but shipping a truck load or a 40ft shipping container is relatively cheap. In the end it all comes down to cost per unit of volume, compared to the raw product cost per volume. A dense product will not nearly be affected by high shipping prices as much, and due to Ikea being insanely good at packaging, I expect they are outcompeting the rest of the market at this game by a decent margin.
By kakacik 2025-10-087:43 Ah yes my very recent experience. We fully redid kitchen and went for Ikea (forsbacka oak, actually decently looking stuff, we will see about longevity). Our kitchen is very restricted, its on all 4 walls and everything needs to fit exactly, plus we have slanted roof on one side, making fitting a rather complex exercise.
So I bought bosch laser meter to be sure I don't mess up planning in their online planning software. We even asked Ikea to send a company that usually builds entire kitchen for them (aka their local partners), just to come for measuring and confirm my numbers (especially the angle of that roof, defines how tall and wide cabinets can fit underneath). It took forever, and the person doing measurements f*cked up badly, adding 30cm width to the place under the roof by mistake. He was re-measuring it but came with same number. I was suspicious of such a huge difference and luckily found his mistake, reverting back to my numbers (so we just wasted 1 month waiting for this company, even ignoring the fee).
Anyway, even with all their planning, in-person consultation, they messed up delivery and few items were missing, and they added few unnecessary items. Since delivery consists of 80+ brown boxes of all sizes that are just dumped on you, there is no way to find any mismatch out before building the actual kitchen. A lot of "fun" around that, I burned some vacation from this year on just chasing their mistakes.
Coming back to original topic - plinths or whatever goes under bottom cabinets to cover the gaping hole where legs are, were insufficient so we now have 0.5m hole there, waiting for item delivery while workers are long gone. Nothing is immediately available for pickup here, so waiting few weeks on piece of plastic weighting 1kg, 2.4m long, that costs cca 30$. Delivery - 100$, no way to even get it delivered to their shop, it needs to be a home delivery.
This is Switzerland, one would expect a bit better service in 2025 for their visibly elevated prices compared to EU all around. I did order the item in French Ikea instead, delivery was 'only' 40$. Not much competition for that price point here, but stellar quality service it certainly wasn't.
/rant
> IKEA likes to find ways to get you into their physical stores because they know you’re going to end up buying more than just the items you came for.
If only they actually had a decent density of stores in the US. I live north of a major metro area (Boston) and I have to drive over 1.5 hours to an IKEA. I used to live in Raleigh, NC and the closest one was over 3.5 hours away.
Although maybe this is part of the strategy, getting you to travel a long distance to there stores in order to keep you there.
By ghaff 2025-10-0817:48 I actually needed a couple of closet accessories after some renovation and IKEA seemed to make the most sense. I could have driven to the Boston-area IKEA but it was a pretty hectic time and, while I could have made a day-long expedition out of the process, at the end of the day, it just made more sense to pay them $60 or whatever to deliver what I needed to assemble and use.
And, yes, I would probably have bought some other things had I gone to the store.
This is completely anectodal, but I have a friend who works there and he talks about a very change-averse culture.
He has to sit through talks about how Ikea is a bussiness that already works very well and the most important thing is to avoid any changes that have even a 0.001% chance of making it not work. Many relatively trivial deployments have to be approved by a lengthy international bureaucracy, with a focus on preventing any automation that can eventually result in workforce not being needed. Things like that.
By showcaseearth 2025-10-082:46 Yep, this is it. I've heard similar.
I worked for a few years at a 100+ year old privately owned (same family) B2B supplier with insane profits. Website was outdated but highly practical, sales/CRM (if you can call it that) systems were mostly command line and hadn't changed fundamentally since the 1980s. These systems worked, and any proposal to change anything took months of meetings and debates and review of every cost/benefit possible. Proving that a change directly translated to a clear revenue metric was nearly impossible– for at least this niche, would more modern sales software actually translate to more orders? (answer: not really, a question reanalyzed every few years in depth). Would a nicer website get more conversions? (also no, something A/B tested to death every few years). Changing the position of one product grouping by a few pixels might be a 6 month job, lol.
By contrast, their fulfillment center was cutting edge, highly automated, and relatively experimental– if it improved the speed and cut costs, they jumped right on. These are much easier to measure as profitable.
By makeitdouble 2025-10-0722:071 reply I'm probably part of that problem.
While I don't shop that much at Ikea, I still remember their product lines, will sift through the dozens of combinations and PDFs, and take notes while looking at the building instructions to see what could be done with a product.
Most of us will choose Ikea for the flexibility, and will happily do some amount of research anyway.
Until reading your comment it didn't hit me that the site was so different from other brands, like Apple for instance. And I sure don't enjoy Apple's site. But then Ikea shops aren't traditional shops either, if sifting through pages of products isn't your thing, walking through sinuous paths all around the shop won't be either.
It's a fundamentally different public.
But how does it make sense in the case you describe to hide those pdfs on the site so deep you cannot find them except when told where to click (or by major accident)?
By makeitdouble 2025-10-0817:451 reply I'm kinda lost, in another comment you mention the Eket system, so if it's those components you're looking for there's a full page for them liked right at the top of the Eket page:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/eket-inserts-accessories-5928...
If we're talking about the "Product details" -> "Assembly and documents" part, that's 3 clicks away and looks pretty straightforward to me. You make it sound like it's 15 levels of links inside the privacy policy.
By 112233 2025-10-095:10 Sorry for confusion. I am talking about documents like this: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/files/pdf/26/84/268411e4/eket_oct...
that contain all information about series in compact, easy to understand form. Try finding that pdf on their site. Now imagine chances of finding it for someone who is not aware it exists. All it would take Ikea is adding one more pdf to the "Assembly and documents" section, so why hide these so much?
The 'Acquired' podcast episode on Ikea speculates that their "buy in person" was historically a cost advantage (especially over pre-assembled furniture that cost $$$ to deliver), as they didn't have to pay shipping/delivery. In the modern era of "expect free shipping as long as some minimum amount is spent", online sold and delivered sales have less profit margin, and one could imagine an intentional business decision to try and keep the in-person experience the "preferred" one for customers.
By ghaff 2025-10-0815:58 I bought some shelving a while back and just paid for delivery. There is a store within driving range, but at the time (and why I needed the items) was going through some things, it was just a day I didn't want to spend.
Certainly, Ikea organizes their stores in a way that probably encourages impulse purchases.
By Traubenfuchs 2025-10-0810:39 Trying to buy an Ikea pax: Some major but simple components I need to complete it are not available. I'd be happy to have everything delivered a month or two in the future, but no, I can't: Either I order now or I manually check back in the future.
Why is everything so shit? Isn't getting me to buy their pax with as many interior elements as possible how they make money?
By cess11 2025-10-088:44 They want you to come to a store, where they can exert immediate influence over you. In some sense it's a cult, more specifically a political cult, and they want you to spend as much time as possible in their environment. They are your family, it's where you go to eat, have someone else take care of your kid, relax and so on.
Ingvar Kamprad was a lifelong fascist, which heavily influences IKEA. Loyalty over competence, futurism over tradition, things like that.
