About 5,000 hopefuls logged on for the chance to sleep over in the furniture store’s Sydney pop-up. Caitlin Cassidy scored a coveted stay, but could she keep her sanity?
If you came of age in the early 2000s, you have probably seen 500 Days of Summer, an indie romcom that romanticised Ikea showrooms as the perfect place for a date. It was thanks to this film that I jumped at the chance to sleep over in what is effectively an Ikea showroom. The caveat being, I would do so alone and, instead of kookily standing in a waterless shower and pretending to cook in a fake kitchen, the taps would work.
My trip was pitched by Ikea as the “ultimate designer staycation” in an inner-Sydney home that has been fully kitted out with the furniture behemoth’s latest Post Scriptum (PS) collection, a limited line now in its 10th edition, that celebrates “playful functionality” and “progressive design”. Ikea offered stays at the luxury property over the June long weekend for $19.95 a night, a homage to the year Ikea PS launched. The fee – the press release notes – is “less than the price of two servings of Ikea meatballs”. The four remaining stays sold out in less than a minute, with more than 5,000 people in line for tickets.
Arriving on Wednesday afternoon, I am among the first people in Australia to sample the new assortment of furniture and decor. It took 48 hours and 12 staff to assemble and style the 105 Ikea items in the house, a spokesperson said. This included blowing up an easy chair with a pump that I later found inside a coffee table (the pump, not the chair). I’m thrilled I don’t have to spend several hours musing over a manual and slowly losing my will to live.
My initial thought upon check-in is that I am hallucinating inside a Scandinavian kindergarten. The blocks of colour are almost aggressively cheerful – green sofas, blue dining room chairs, a red clock shaped like a bent tube. Six hollow-eyed face masks hang in the entertaining area. They look like paper plates that have been hole-punched. They give me a vague sense of discomfort mixed with fear.
The home’s contents range from $4.99 for the alarming wall decorations to $799 for a chic three-seat sofabed but, given the exclusivity of the PS range – the previous, ninth edition was in 2017 – some of these items could end up developing cult followings and skyrocketing in price. The head of communications at Ikea Australia and New Zealand, Patricia Routledge, says: “The Ikea PS 2026 collection delivers that ‘wow, I didn’t see that coming’ moment, something surprising, optimistic, playful and brave, while always staying affordable.”
