IKEA Helps Experience Kitchen in Virtual Reality

IKEA, a ready-to-assemble home furnishing company, has launched a new virtual reality experience for customers at home that will allow users to design their very own kitchen. The app - IKEA VR Experience - has been made in collaboration with developers at the French company Allegorithmic, using Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games, and has been developed for HTC Vive — created by HTC and Valve.

IKEA VR Experience is a pilot test “exploring new ways to empower customers without increasing the impact on the environment”, IKEA says. It's a chance to try out kitchen features before you buy them, in real world size.

Using an HTC Vive headset, users of IKEA's Swedish-style furnishings, can explore three different virtual kitchens, and change the color of the cabinets and drawers with a click. You can also view the kitchens from different perspectives by "shrinking or stretching" yourself to see how space looks as a 3.3-foot-tall child or a 6.4-foot-tall adult. This can be useful for those taking on a home renovation, as it may help you "discover hidden dangers or possible design solutions," IKEA pointed out.

“Virtual reality is developing fast and in five to ten years it will be an integrated part of people’s lives. We see that virtual reality will play a major role in the future of our customers, for instance, it could be used to enable customers to try out a variety of home furnishing solutions before buying them,” said Jesper Brodin, managing director at IKEA of Sweden and Range and Supply Manager at IKEA Group.

The pilot app will be available until August, and Ikea plans to continuously update it until then.

"We hope that users will contribute to our virtual reality development, by submitting ideas on how to use virtual reality and how to improve the virtual kitchen," Martin Enthed, IT Manager for Ikea Communications, said in a statement.