IKEA Inspires a Tiny House

IKEA has built a tiny home that’s living large. Refreshingly the house doesn’t skimp on style or amenities, and it has been designed with sustainability at its core.

The tiny house movement — typically dwellings smaller than 500 square-feet — has been surging in popularity for more than a decade, and increasingly so in the past year as travelers seek safe, remote and compact havens during the pandemic. Now IKEA is getting on board by designing and decorating a tiny house through the IKEA Tiny Home Project.

IKEA is no stranger to clever design for small spaces—but the furniture giant recently took on a tiny living challenge unlike any other it’s faced with The IKEA Tiny Home Project, a design/build exercise that fits outsize style into a 187-square-foot, off-grid home on wheels.

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Tiny Home Project is equal measures stylish, sustainable, and functional. IKEA’s most notable new product offering is not a piece of furniture, but an entire tiny house. Inspired by its commitments to sustainability, inclusivity and innovation, the Swedish furniture company has teamed up with Wisconsin-based tiny house maker Escape Traveler to create a 187-square-foot dwelling that is equal measures stylish, sustainable, and functional.

Based on Escape Traveler’s existing Vista Boho XL model, the IKEA version of the tiny house features the same layout as the original and has a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom.

Dubbed as IKEA’s Tiny Home Project, the tiny house comes prebuilt and are constructed on a flatbed trailer that can be attached to a tow vehicle. The house also features a plumbing system with a pressurized water tank that provides homeowners with running water even if they are living off the grid. To power the house, solar panels are mounted on the roof.

The roof, frame, and siding of the house are all made with materials that could stand up to the elements. The exterior siding, in particular, is made from Escape Traveler’s trademark Japanese-inspired burnt wood, known as Shou Sugi Ban, while the woods inside are lined with the company’s signature sustainably grown pine. The interior walls are painted white to make the space feel larger.

Staying true to IKEA’s sustainability-focused goals for its Tiny Home Project, many aspects of the home’s interior are eco-friendly. IKEA outfitted the home with energy-efficient lighting solutions, including light bulbs that use approximately 85 percent less energy compared to their traditional counterparts. The house is also installed with taps and showers that have a mechanism on them that helps save water and energy while keeping the water pressure just right.

Guided by the company’s People & Planet Positive sustainability strategy, the Tiny Home Project prioritizes low-impact design. IKEA tapped Vox Creative for the partnership, who contracted RV and tiny home builder ESCAPE for a custom build of the company’s Vista Boho XL model that’s fitted out with solar panels, a composting toilet, and an on-demand RV water heater for off-grid capability.

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