Interesting thoughts. Not sure so many of them would work in my real home setting, but I like the thoughts!

Emily

Oh, the new IKEA catalogue... Gotta go get one. I think that they often use their products in such interesting ways that it can inspire one to use their own items in nifty and previously unthought of ways... A lot of people love to knock Ikea, but for certain household items...wooden hangers come to mind...they simply can't be beat! Also, the dishes and glassware at IKEA has been getting incredibly interesting as of late. A few months ago I found some amazing tall, ten ounce glasses by SNALL that have turquoise patterns on them that remind me much of the amazing vintage bar sets of the 1950s and 1960s... And at a dollar a glass, you won't worry so about offering one to a clumsy friend...

Maybe this is a sign that I've outgrown Ikea, but the sets in the catalogue look so messy and unfocused. I can't wrap my head around what their message is supposed to be - paint my walls bright pink and hang crap all over the place? Something seems amiss.

The catalogue is getting a bit messy

Another reason to go to the multitudes of other sources available for design ideas like decor books and magazines, museums and travel for inspiration.

Ikea is good for a few (and I mean very few) pieces and that's about it. Design cribbing, I think not.

So they're knocking off Corbusier's Grand Confort now? Well, at least he's not around to see it.

"in this example, the shelving functions as somewhat of a replacement for artwork"

Wow. In designland art is just another component, interchangeable with shelving.

And another thing. It slays me when people say "You need some art on that wall." Really? Why must people put art on their wall?

I think all the rooms look very cluttered. Seems like less would be more.

I will be stealing the entry way "closet" to make my own mudroom at my back door....

cluttered??? This is what happens when you actually LIVE in a home/room/closet however small the place is instead of making a space antiseptic and devoid of signs of life (as it appears so many here want to have an art studio for a home)

That red room would NEVER work anywhere else but an Ikea catalog, let's be honest

Hm I need more space for my books so the wall shelves seem like a good solution but they do look cluttered.

agree with ubertimmo, they look lived in; furthermore they are typically for small, multifunctional spaces like most city dwellers have, vs. some 3000 sq ft minimalist house.

#8 is kind of interesting how they've used wall shelves to look kind of like bookshelves on the left.

#9 is just terrible, as is the red room.

I never understood the IKEA living rooms that have walls covered in cabinets. Who does that?

And I agree that these rooms look very cluttered and busy, but IKEA rooms usually are. That red room in particular is horrific. Cramming as many products into a picture as possible seems like an odd way to showcase them, though maybe the point is to demonstrate that you can outfit an entire room with IKEA.

slowdown, again I think the point is the audience is city dwellers who have to make the most of space...a wall of cabinets or bookshelves just makes sense if you don't have a big space.

Sure, I get the idea, but it doesn't look particularly good and I've never seen anyone line their walls with cabinets. I'd imagine that, unless the cabinets were fairly shallow, it would made the room even smaller. And if you have so much stuff that you need an entire wall of cabinets to hold it, then maybe you should clear some of it out?

I never understood the IKEA living rooms that have walls covered in cabinets. Who does that?

People who live in small homes with little to no closet space.

"I never understood the IKEA living rooms that have walls covered in cabinets. Who does that?"

People who live in small homes with little to no closet space- and have children.

"I never understood the IKEA living rooms that have walls covered in cabinets. Who does that?"

Most high-rise Scandinavian & Baltic apartments built after WWII don't have built-in closets so cabinets lining one living room wall and in the bedrooms are common, if not standard features.

For Henriette the Terrible:
William Carlos Williams tells us (and he should know) that "It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
He wrote "The Red Wheelbarrow"
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

He was a country doctor. When I first read this poem around age 12, I imagined that he had been to a farmhouse and tried to save a young boy from mumps or measles, and lost him, and stood washing his hands over and over at a wash-basin in the kitchen, looking (as the child's mother must have every day) out of window at the yard, and seeing the abandoned wheel barrow, bright in the rain, and hung on with all his heart to the comfort of that scene as he tried to work up the nerve to tell the parents that he hadn't saved the child.

If I ever find the right image of a red wheelbarrow, I'll put it up over my kitchen sink.

That's why we need art.

...and to the rest of you: If you can recommend a good image of a red wheelbarrow, I'd be thrilled.

rapunzel:

Huh?

poppet72:

Try e.e.cummings, dear.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

All better now?

i live in around 400sqft, i think that my life has incorporated outdoor space, living space, cooking space, entertaining for 2-30 in formal and informal ways very well without looking anything like any of these places. it's not minimal but it's not so intensely cluttered that it is distracting.

that entry set-up is just plain old terrible.

Rapunzel:

Oh yeah, that cleared it up.

Yours sincerely
"dear"

@poppet72: I apologize. I had no right to be so snippy; please chalk it up to my wounded foot (sliced a divot [no, really - 1/4" deep and big as a half-dollar) out of my foot and I am just cranky from dealing with two flights of stairs at home AND at work.
What I meant was that we need art because the aim of art is to do more than decorate. Artists (other than decorative artists, who live in their own in-between place) seek to connect/disconnect, comfort/frighten, love/hate, unite/divide the viewer with the viewer's own perceptions of the art and the world it (seems to) represent(s). A decorative space can come to life using art; my space relies on formal gestures such as symmetry and vaguely French antique/Paris apartment touches. That and the loads of books imply a slightly stuffy old-fashioned intellectual. A famous painting by the French artist Greuze (scandalous in its time and still infamous) depicts a beautiful young woman, exposed to the waist, clearly in the throes of a delicious orgasm. The Getty exhibited it (the collector who owns it rarely shows it) and I got a brochure and framed the color image of the painting in an ornate gold frame. The classical French style and the scandalous subject challenge and define the decorative style. An antique print rescued from a temple in Cambodia next to a Victorian rendition of an ancient Celtic fertility goddess whose usually wide-spread legs were depicted as tightly closed, next to a 70s era lithograph of a young girl who could be my daughter (if I could have children) all layer in depths of meaning as each piece of art speaks to the next, and the art deepens and highlights the decoration, and the whole of it reveals and conceals the heart and soul of the person who lives there.
The goal of art (oh, la, I am opening a debate with this, but...) is to make meaning out of the beauty/horror (see Guernica by Picasso) the sacred/profane (see Yoruba art featuring Mami Wata) and other dualities of human existence, using fragments of human existence to test and support that very meaning. It's hard, it's stunning, it'll break your heart and piss you off and it will never never leave you alone. If it doesn't do those things, or fail spectacularly as proof that it tried, it isn't art, it's decoration.
I'll stop now. I need to change the bandage on my foot and go to bed. I hope I've done a better job now, and that you'll forgive my earlier petulance.
Thanks.

I find the Ikea catalogue inspirational, especially those showcasing, living with kids. I think just about everyone can utilize a few organizational ideas showcased to help their house run more smoothly. With or without kids.

And yes people who live in small spaces do have children. They just have to be clever with storage.

I like the way the Ikea stylists decorate. I mean if you want something stark and sterile than Ikea is not the place for you. Design is suppose to be what you like. Some folks like having stuff...that is natural. Others like to live in a museum. Stop knocking what is not for you. Keep on doing what you do Ikea...there are lovers out here who are fans!!

It's lucky we have Rapunzel around to teach us plebeians about poetry, art, and idioms.

It's lucky we have Rapunzel around to teach us plebeians about poetry, art, and idioms.

I'm intrigued by #6, but I'm afraid it would only work in rooms with a similarly monochromatic scheme...otherwise it would just look "college-esque."

brilliant blog, now i have to run out and get a catalog!

Rapunzel needs to go blog somewhere..

When Ikea design there stuff they don't have in mind big American houses, their design in general is for people who live in the city and mostly they have Europe in mind, where a 1000 sq f. apartment/house is a dream for most of the people there.

each year, i am disgusted at first with the new ikea catalog only to find myself warming up to it a few weeks later. i have always loved change, but at the same despised it.

this year, i'm not sure though. there weren't too many setups that i fell in love with instantly. also, i agree with those who said everything looking cluttered. i mean, i have a TON of junk in my bedroom, but i manage to hide it nicely. this year's rooms all look random, and too busy.

one feature i keep missing from the 2007 catalog, is the WHOLE home setup in the beginning. it showed how a whole house was put together and coordinated, creating one seamless space. i mean sure, there are a ton of room setups in this catalog, but it's nice seeing how one of those rooms works with others to create an entire home.

also, i feel like an intern or just plain poor designer did the graphic/layout design for this catalog. first of all, it looks like they dropped futura (which they have used for a lot of company-wide typography) for something cheap looking like tahoma or verdana. also, there are captions everywhere that are nearly unreadable (black text on a dark background). and so on. the copy isn't as quirky or professional sounding as previous editions either. that's me just being picky, though.

very true – Ikea show rooms usually are designed with little space in mind. it is much easier to make stuff look good when there is a lot of space around it :-D. i always check out Ikea's storage ideas as they usually have a lot of good ones
(at least for somebody living and working in a 540 sq ft place, with lots of books, and a tight budget).

I just want those boot hangars. Best idea ever. I'm thinking that combining three or four of those, depending on the weight of the boots, with a chain suspended from the closet rod would be a really effective storage solution.