IKEA Goes Retro by Reviving Furniture Designs from the 1950s

The retro furniture look is expected to be big in 2015, and longstanding furniture titan IKEA is responding by reviving pieces of furniture from the 1950s-1970s.The 26 different sofas, seats, lamps, dishes and rugs are part of IKEA’s Årgång collection, which will only be available from select IKEA stores for a limited amount of time. The collection features bright colors, inventive designs and retro flair.

Retro furniture has been on trend since stylish shows like Mad Men took over TV, but Ikea didn’t have to create new designs based on older design techniques. The 70-year-old company just had to reach back through its catalogs and select a few gems to sell again, giving it a distinct advantage over newer companies trying to recapture the magic of the past.

Each furniture piece in the new collection is based on a piece IKEA sold decades ago, so customers can purchase pieces that are newly manufactured but authentically retro.

For instance, the collection’s Gårdskär lamp, based on the SILA lamp from 1959, is a cylindrical white pendant lamp with a band of red glass around the middle.

IKEA’s new Strandmon chair actually appeared in one of the first IKEA catalogs as the 1951 MK chair, and a butterfly chair, knocked off from a design that never really went off-trend, is also included in the new collection.

The collection should be highly popular with lovers of retro furniture who still want the sleek quality of modern manufacturing.

“It’s always a great idea to incorporate certain vintage items in your modern house setting,” says José Loor of Contempo Furniture. “The use of getting vintage décor items is booming but making it work in a modern design setting is a hard task to do. Thereafter some costumers are just focusing in creating modern environments with sleek features and within a fine line of design.”

Ikea recommends that customers interested in these designs call stores in advance to make sure the collection is there. At the moment, there isn’t a U.S. site for the furniture collection, but it is currently for sale.Even if customers miss this round of sales, there’s every possibility that the pieces will return through what the Scandinavian furniture company calls the “IKEA circle of life.”