The fiddly ritual of assembling IKEA furniture is set to become a thing of the past as the furniture giant introduces products that snap together "like a jigsaw puzzle".
The brand has developed a new type of joint, called a wedge dowel, that makes it much quicker and simpler to assemble wooden products. This does away with the need for screws, bolts, screwdrivers and allen keys.
IKEA have introduced a new type of joint, called a wedge dowel, to make furniture assembly much simpler
The small, ribbed protrusion comes ready installed in flat-packed furniture panels and slots into pre-drilled holes in neighbouring panels.
The innovation has partly been driven by consumer resistance to the often slow and frustrating experience of putting together IKEA products, and partly as a way of saving resources, since it does away with the need for dozens of metal fittings. IKEA first introduced the wedge-dowel concept in 2014, on products including its Stockholm cabinets
"IKEA furniture typically contains quite a lot of fittings," IKEA CEO Jesper Brodin told Dezeen. "We see some challenges in the time and interest in doing that."
"So we thought, what happens if we try to take them out totally" We are now into the implementation phase of making it possible for you to click your furniture together."
IKEA first introduced the wedge dowel in its Regissör storage products and Stockholm cabinets in 2014 to test the concept. It now intends to r...