IKEA on Tuesday unveiled a pair of wireless speakers that are designed to stand out, not blend in — pairing playful colors with furniture-grade forms. Designed with the Swedish colorist and designer Tekla Evelina Severin, or Teklan, the new lineup consists of a round speaker in sizes ranging from small to large ($99.95 to $199.95) and a lantern-like lamp that is also a speaker ($149), both intended to be shown off in living spaces.
Headlining Amazon’s devices event on Tuesday was its latest Echo featuring tweaked designs — as well as a clear effort by the company to ramp up privacy control and convenience within homes — driven heavily by artificial intelligence capabilities.
Design That Demands Display in Everyday Living Spaces
Here, the story is the aesthetic. IKEA bucks its own black-cylinder norm to double down on rounded silhouettes, soft fabrics and a gelato-inspired color palette. The circle speaker is situated behind a woven mesh that’s intended to be more home textile than gadget grille. Teklan’s philosophy centers “friendly” shapes and saturated yet calming tones, indicative of a wider move toward tech that presents like decor.
That design-first stance matters. Research firms that keep tabs on the category have observed that buyers increasingly desire devices that complement their interiors, rather than call too much attention to themselves. It’s the same urge that once fueled hideous furniture units for your stereo system, and IKEA is doubling down with choices you might actually want to hang on a wall or put atop a sideboard.
Two Playful Form Factors Inspired by Home Decor
The circular design, which is the one from the Solskydd line adopted by Mr. Hemmings, comes in three diameters — 8 inches, 11 inches and 18 inches. The little guy is single driver for small setups, followed by a mid-size and large model with both tweeter and woofer for a larger response. The two smaller sizes have stands for placement on a tabletop; the largest is designed to hang like art, turning sound into a wall feature.
The second one, Kulglass, is a lamp-speaker hybrid with a shade that swirls like soft-serve ice cream.
The base features a 1-inch tweeter and a 3.5-inch woofer that’s best suited for small to midsize rooms, while the shade accepts a regular bulb so it can operate as an honest-to-goodness lamp. It’s a weird combo that saves space and adds some color while managing music, podcasts, and ambient playlists.
Connectivity and Everyday Use Across Home Spaces
Both of the speakers have Bluetooth functionality to make it easier to pair and listen casually. There’s also Spotify Tap, a nifty feature that brings up your last Spotify session with a tap (read: less phone faffing). You can pair several units together for a bigger room soundstage and more consistent room coverage (a popular option for open-plan spaces where one speaker doesn’t cut it).
Both this emphasis on straightforward controls and the ability to connect multiple speakers also happen to reflect how people typically use audio in their homes: living rooms, kitchens and general-use spaces. Spotify, the most widely used music and audio app on devices, is aiming for over 600 million monthly listeners (from Spotify Q3 2020 Earnings Press Release), showing the significance of having features that simplify listening across rooms and devices.
Pricing, Availability, and the Current Market Context
Pricing is aggressive. The Solskydd circular speakers begin at $99.99 and go up to $139.99 depending on size. The Kulglass lamp-speaker is $129.99. That puts the lineup beneath many of those design-led rivals, while making it squarely impulse-ready for home refreshes.
IKEA says availability will be by market. For those considering alternatives, the pricing is undercutting mainstay bookshelf-and-smart speakers from premium brands — and an array of decor-minded finishes that don’t typically make appearances at this tier. It’s a smart play as market trackers like Canalys have noted that overall smart speaker shipments are cooling, after earlier growth in the category. It makes sense that there should be more differentiation on design and not just specs.
Why It Matters for the Modern Living Room
Audio equipment that looks as good in the open as a microwave oven is more likely to be used regularly.
By turning a speaker into a wall piece or a lamp into something that emits sound, IKEA solves two common grievances: visual clutter and limited surface space. It’s a pragmatic evolution of the brand’s prior audio curiosities and also an unapologetic statement about the next wave of home tech being as much about aesthetic as audio appeal.
If you’re grounding a room in color and texture, these speakers catch up with you. If you’re in pursuit of clean lines and fewer boxes, they can do that too. In either case, they argue that home audio can be joyful — not merely audible.
