Ikea's Furniture Is About to Get a Lot Easier to Assemble
By Lynsey Eidell. Photos: Courtesy of IKEA.
Ikea furniture is scientifically proven to cause arguments, and we totally understand why. Unless you thrive on the nitty-gritty, assembling a piece from the Swedish furniture giant can be an infuriating, hours-long challenge, due to a frustrating combination of dozens of wordless steps, confusing illustrations, and hundreds of tiny pieces. But we keep coming back for more, because of Ikea’s super-affordable and super-cute collections (like this and this). The struggle is real.
Good news, though: Putting together Ikea furniture is about to get significantly easier, thanks to a genius invention out of its prototype shop called the wedge dowel. The wedge dowel will eliminate the need for screws, nails, and other tools (like that damn L wrench), because it allows the furniture to simply snap together. (Seriously.) In other words, the Ikea assembly process is going from "practically requires a mechanical engineering degree" to "beginner's-level puzzle."
So how does it work? The wedge dowel is essentially a small plastic or wooden screwlike fitting (see below) that clicks into predrilled holes. In the ultimate win-win situation, the snap-and-go invention both "simplifies the assembly process to make it more fun and easy" and "makes machine-made furniture more beautiful by removing visible fittings," according to the company's blog. And the best part? It promises to reduce the assembly time for a piece of Ikea furniture by 50 to 80 percent.
There are certain Ikea pieces featuring this magical wedge dowel already on the market in Europe, including the Tromvik cabinets and chest of drawers, Valje cubes, Regissör cabinets, Tingby tables, and Lisabo tables. You can learn more about the mechanism by watching the video here.
This story originally appeared on Glamour.
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