You think about changing the decor of your house and the first thing that comes to your mind is IKEA.
You sit down with that big IKEA catalog at night after work, flip through the pages and try to imagine how the pieces you're eyeing would actually fit in your home. You even start measuring with a ruler, doing calculations hoping your favorite piece of decor would fit into your space.
You love the armchairs and bookcases but somehow they never look as perfect in your cramped apartment as they do in the aptly decorated showrooms.
This demotivates you to even take a look at the catalog leave alone visiting the store.
But now you’ll look forward to pick up that decor book and re-design your house.
IKEA's 2014 catalog aims to ease some of that angst by letting you plan ahead with its augmented reality feature.
This new feature, which will be available on August 25 and uses an augmented reality technology, allows you to see what the furniture would really look like in your own home.
How to go about it.
All you have to do is scan the pages of catalog with the augmented reality app on your mobile device, place the printed catalog wherever you'd like in the spot where you're considering adding a new piece of furniture.With the camera on the phone or tablet, the app captures an image of the room, using the catalog as a size guide, for the virtual furniture that you can place in the room. After this step you can select the desired item with a 3-D model view of the piece in your room on your phone or tablet.
Since the app uses the front cover of the catalog as a reference, it is likely you can use a printed copy of the Ikea catalog cover instead of having to bring along an entire book.
Ikea is actually transporting its products into your house, associating your living room with its showroom through a sort of digital test drive. So you needn’t visit the store, of course.
The 2014 catalog will be available in print, as well as on iPhone, iPad and Android.
You can also look forward to several highly anticipated new releases, such as the Lövbacken table, a revival of the company's original flat-pack table produced in 1956.
Watch the video above to see how it works:
