This Is the IKEA Furniture of the Future

Shop New IKEA Fall Decor Here!

HÖSTAGILLE

The HÖSTAGILLE collection, available August 1, features home textiles in warm autumnal colors, affordable seasonal home decor like scented candles, and elevated kitchen essentials perfect for your next fall gathering. This pie plate is just $13. Score two of the orange dish towels for $4!

This pumpkin bowl in brown glass is perfect for holding small things like your favorite Halloween candy.

A $5 cushion cover and a cotton throw turns your summer home into a warm and cozy fall retreat instantly.

IKEA tealights get a Halloween makeover for a spooky table setting.

What's a scary Halloween without a dramatic candlebra?

Serve up your best recipes in style in a large baking dish, ideal for gratins and roasts.

My daughter is obsessed with bats and will love this bat cushion cover!

KUSTFRYR Collection

Celebrate the spookiest time of the year with a Scandi vibe. Find festive lighting and decor, affordable trick-or-treat bags, and modern serving pieces in the new KUSTFRYR collection.

Get in the Halloween mood with these B&W festive pillows.

Light up your home during shorter days with LED string lights and forest-scene tealight holder.

MITTZON Collection

MITTZON, an 85-piece office collection, is perfect for the small business or WFHer. It's designed to keep the office quiet with products that absorb and block sound, keep distractions at bay, and offer much-needed privacy. Find foldable desks, adjustable standing desks, acoustic screens, and more.

HATTÅSEN Bedside Table

Find colorful pieces too for the home this fall, like this decorative side table in playful pink. It's compact, lightweight and you can move around the house for different uses.

IKEA PS 1995 clock

Also, check out the IKEA PS 1995 clock, which can hang on the wall or sit on a shelf. Open the front and store small trinket. Kids will love it!

IKEA PS 2014 Pendant lamp

The IKEA PS 2014 pendant lamp won the international design competition's Red Dot Award. You can change its shape and intensity of light by simply pulling its strings.

BADRING Smart Sensors Collection

Finally, the BADRING smart sensors collection is available now so you can have a smart home on a budget. This include the Badring Water Leak Sensor, which will let you know if you have, well, a water leak before it's too late.

RIBBA Frame

IKEA is a steal for frames compared to other frame or custom frame shops. I have been using the Ribba frame for years for large-scale prints, gallery walls, and photo-sized frames. Mix them with vintage frames and trinkets like above to add character and a little soul to your space.

FLÅDIS Basket

I use these seagrass baskets everywhere to store and hide unsightly things like laundry supplies, my daughter's toys, and even to cover planters. They're collapsible and under $10!

TORNVIKEN Kitchen Island

I was searching for a kitchen island forever until I came upon this oak one and I love it! I get compliments on it all the time from guests who are surprised it's from IKEA. There's roomy storage on the shelves on one side and legroom on the other side for bar stools. I chose Serena & Lily barstools to give the look an upgrade.

BLANDA MATT Bamboo Serving Bowl

This bamboo bowl and serving set is perfect for serving big salads while entertaining.

HILDEGUN Dish towel

I grab a few of these every time I visit IKEA. They have a French country vibe and work as dish towels or dinner napkins. The 79 cents is kind of an insane price too.

ULLERSLEV Sheepskin

This real sheepskin is the soft texture every cozy home needs. I have one draped over my daughter's desk chair, but they also look great on a dining bench or in a reading nook.

BERGPALM Duvet Cover and Pillowcases

These striped duvet cover sets are a great cotton canvas for guest, kid, and master beds. I love that they come with two shams, and I'll top them with a printed quilt from Coyuchi or patterned pillows from Coterie Brooklyn to elevate the look.

FJÄLLARNIKA Duvet Insert

IKEA is also great for duvet inserts. I say go with a mid- to higher-range here for one that has some weight and comfort.

IVRIG Glass

Stemless wine glasses, which is what I use these for, are also ideal for water and juice!

STOCKHOLM Mirror

Mirrors can be so expensive! Why?! I use this walnut veneer mirror in my bedroom, just above a walnut dresser. Love the 24-inch size.

JÄMLIK Scented Tealight

I bring a few of these out for dinner parties. The sweet vanilla scent isn't overpowering and the candles give just enough light to make it feel like a cozy and intimate occasion.

LAGKAPTEN Tabletop

I've been using this tabletop for more than 10 years! It started as a sewing table with MITTBACK trestle legs and now works as my WFH desk, holding my printer on one of the trestle legs. My daughter has an IKEA desk too that we swapped with HILVER bamboo cone-shaped legs for a modern look.

LACK Wall Shelf

I've used these floating shelves for forever too. For kitchen shelves in my junior one bedroom in San Francisco a decade ago and now in my daughter's playroom to hold all of her Legos.;)

MÅLERÅS Picture Ledge

I use these picture ledges in the kitchen to hold my IKEA wine glasses, a beautiful paddle cutting board from Crate & Barrel, and a small plant.

ÄNDLIG 3-piece knife set

These IKEA knives, also a long-term purchase, stay sharp, are comfortable to use, and are great for everyday use!

BUMERANG Hanger

Finally, these IKEA hangers are affordable and look great to streamline your closet decor. No wire hangers here!

IKEA Items I Avoid

I tend to avoid the more popular items from IKEA, such as the best-selling POÄNG Armchair. If you have one, no judgement! It's a great chair. I have a kid's one in my daughter's playroom that we inherited. But I've slowly invested in more quality pieces that feel unique and bring my joy when I walk into my main spaces.

Here are a few items I avoid:

IKEA has a lot of great mattresses, but a $100 mattress doesn't quite feel like a hundred bucks. I purchased the ÅSVANG Foam Mattress for my daughter's IKEA bunk bed, and maybe because of the slats below, it is SO uncomfortable. We use it to hold her stuffies for now and plan to add an extra foam cushion above.

I've never liked IKEA's fleece-like throw blankets made of recycled polyester. They just don't have a lot of substance and the material doesn't feel as good quality as I'd like it too.

Finally, a $10 floor lamp is going to look like a $10 floor lamp (home snob, here, sorry!). The BARLAST Floor lamp or similar is a no-go in my decor book.

Stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, as well as director Jon M. Chu, welcomed the cast with open arms — literally. "[They] would hug everyone who came in," he says. "The first day I think every actor had a minimum two-hour meeting with Jon just to walk through all of the designs and all the things and talk about character. And so from from the very beginning, it just felt like it's really safe...This huge movie is something that we've been waiting for for 20 years on a big scale with the biggest stars in the world, it could have felt really intimidating and it felt really familial immediately."

And part of that family dynamic meant there was a lot of laughing, even if there weren't too many pranks. "There was a lot of just hanging out and giggling on set. I think Jon and Michelle [Yeoh] have a real special — they go back and so they were really funny...All of the people in this cast from afar are so intimidating. It's Michelle Yeoh, like, it's Jeff Goldblum. And then in person, they're just down to clown and it was so fun. I don't know if [there were] pranks, I was too nervous to do pranks. And I think people were kind and didn't prank me, but there was a lot of giggles."

With Ariana Grande's natural humor and SNL star Bowen Yang, it's no wonder some of the funniest moments happened during the Shiz University scenes. "I cannot wait for like the roll out of everything that Bowen said that isn't in the movie, or Ari, honestly, said that isn't in the movie. Just take after take."

"It's hard not to [laughing while filming]," he continues. "I think we were pretty good. But the moments where somebody broke, it was always great. There's one that's seared into my memory of, in Doctor Dillamond's classroom, I don't remember what Ari said but she got Cynthia and it's just the two of them across the way and they're staring at each other and she got her so good. There's something really wonderful about breaking. It's delightful."

Another standout scene featuring the Shiz students is "Dancing Through Life," and the number's rehearsal is one of Ethan Slater's most memorable days on Wicked. "We had a rehearsal with, I don't know, maybe 100 dancers working on 'Dancing Through Life' and Jon came down, this was really early on and he gathered all the dancers around and he gave this speech [where] he basically told the story about how he fell in love with filmmaking," he says. "And it was because of dancers and it was because of the collaboration between dancers and the camera. And he was like, 'We're all in this together. And if you need anything, find me. I'm in the director's chair, but I'm accessible.' And he was, I would sit next to him and watch take after take and he would like point things [out]. He was just so generous."

Is directing something Ethan himself would be interested in? "There's so much I have to learn, but I'm excited to learn it," he says. "And I write and I love writing for the screen and all of that someday I would love to take that on. But I think I'm self aware enough to know that it might be a little ways down the line."

Now, bringing it back to the "Dancing Through Life" of it all, I couldn't help but dance in my seat throughout the song, and Ethan Slater promises it was just as fun to film as it is to watch. "[Jonathan Bailey] the most charismatic human on the planet, it's nuts," he says. "That whole scene was so fun and it was fun. Jonny and Ari are so funny, they're just an incredible duo and they're so funny individually."

"What you can't see is that even in the shots that I'm not in, I'm like, just right here [off camera]," he continues. "I'm just like really close by just out of frame which is like a little Easter egg just for me, you know, watching it and be like, 'Oh I was there!' But I just got to sort of be around in their orbit. They're magnetic, both of them."

While his character Boq spends the whole film nursing a huge crush on Glinda, Ethan Slater actually swept Ariana Grande off her feet IRL. The duo made headlines when they reportedly coupled up while filming, but Ethan says he still feels like a middle schooler when it comes to romance — and that "just existing" means he embarrasses himself in front of his crushes.

"I definitely am a person who suddenly can't speak or just be like, 'Oh my God, good morning and thank you for coming,'" he says, pretending to tear up. "That is kind of my MO and always has been. I think I've never left the place of feeling like a 7th grader." I guess we're all just fools in love!

"Dancing Through Life" is just one number Wicked fans have been looking forward to — "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" are two of the most recognizable showtunes, and they're so recognizable that a line from "Defying Gravity," "Everyone Deserves The Chance To Fly," became the tagline for the film.

"The message that 'what makes us different makes us unique' is really powerful, and I think it's two-fold," Ethan Slater says. "One is, it's empowering to each person that you do deserve it, you deserve happiness, you deserve to be seen and you deserve to do the great things that you want to be doing. But also as a directive, you know, the way that we treat others. It's not just me that deserves that, it's you. And making sure that you treat others the way that you would want to be treated, or to acknowledge the humanity in others that it's so easy to acknowledge in yourself. So I think it's both things. I think it's both empowering and it's like a good way to treat people."

What does Ethan pick when he wants to sing? (No, it's not Spongebob). "Honestly, if I just want to like belt at the top of my lungs, I go to Jesus Christ Superstar. I do "Heaven On Their Minds." It's so good. It's incredible. Talk about a great movie musical."

While the fan (and theatre kid) reactions have been incredible so far, Ethan Slater says he loved talking to the original Wicked cast. "I've become very close with Chris Fitzgerald, who was the original Boq and with Norbert Leo Butz who is the original Fiyero," he says. "So after they saw it, I got to talk with them a little bit about what it was like to see and that was really meaningful. Not just because they're friends of mine and not just because I look up to them, but because it meant a lot to me that I took care of Boq, this role that Chris created. And he's, the best of the best so that was really cool."