Building 3D with IKEA — the original interview
Kirsty Parkin's interview — the piece every article above is quoting. CGSociety's site is long gone; this is the Internet Archive's capture from September 2014.
Traces
Things I've done sometimes leave traces. These are some of them.
In June 2014 CGSociety published an interview with me about how IKEA had moved most of its product photography to CGI. One number in it — 75% — was picked up at the end of August and went round the world in about ten days.
Read them together and a pattern shows up. Nearly every headline is written as an exposé — say it ain't so, aren't photos, aux trois-quarts bidonné — and then almost every piece, inside, is about the craft: how the images are made, why kitchens are the hardest room, what it took to get there. The alarm is on the outside.
Two years later the coverage had changed shape entirely. When we put a virtual IKEA kitchen on Steam in April 2016, nobody framed it as a deception — it was a retailer doing something odd and early, and the press treated it that way. We then kept changing it in public for eight months based on what people asked for, which turned out to mean meatballs. It ended at the first VR Awards in London in October 2017.
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The source, and the arguments about it
Where the number actually came from, and where people went to argue about it.
Building 3D with IKEA (PDF)
The same interview as a PDF, kept here in case the archive copy ever goes too.
Building 3D with Ikea — discussion
337 points and 61 comments, mostly from people who build rendering pipelines themselves — so it goes straight past “IKEA furniture is flimsy” and into how the work is actually done.
What's actually in there
The practitioners turn up quickly. A 3D artist explains that the models almost certainly come straight out of CAD: “When you're working with CAD/Solidworks drawings, you can import them directly into 3ds Max as paths, and work with them in the viewport with accurate dimensions. I would be very surprised if that wasn't the typical Ikea workflow.” Another identifies the renderer as V-Ray and points at a SIGGRAPH V-Ray Days talk of Martin's that nobody could find online.
The more interesting half is people predicting, in 2014, what would arrive three years later as IKEA Place: “instead of you visiting IKEA's virtual shop, the virtual items are sent to you and rendered in 3D and overlayed on your existing room, so you can walk around the item and see what it looks like in your own room. You then press the ‘buy’ button and it is delivered.”
And a good counter-argument to the whole idea, which has aged well: IKEA does not actually want you shopping from home. “Their stores are structured so that you have to go through everything and see everything and activate that ‘nesting instinct.’ Hmm, I want a chair, but that cutting board is really nice… and there's a knife block that matches it.”
In the Ikea catalog, the humans are probably real. The rest is CGI.
Where the sharpest observation in the whole news wave turned up — not about whether the images are real, but about what a rendered catalogue lets a company quietly do.
What's actually in there
The thread lands almost immediately on localisation, which none of the press coverage had thought about: “If IKEA catalogues are generated through a highly flexible compositing workflow, it makes it easier to localise them to different markets; from adjusting the size of spaces to not look foreign (a Hong Kong apartment will be smaller than an American home) to having a plausible number of same-sex couples in their tableaus except where they're illegal.” Someone else immediately supplies the real example — the women removed from the Saudi edition of the catalogue, a story that had broken the year before.
Others work out the logical end point: “they could eventually use that to do a customized Ikea catalog with styling. I could do a style quiz and Ikea would spit out a catalog featuring yellow textiles, folk art and stained wood furniture.”
And the detail everyone quotes from the interview is the render farm that isn't one — every desk machine in Älmhult conscripted the moment its owner walks into a meeting.
Here's Why Your Ikea Furniture Looks Better in a Catalog
Ten years on, the story is still being retold — a 2024 retrospective.
Cited & quoted
Not press coverage — places where the work is on the record: industry announcements that quote Martin directly, and an academic book that treats the 2014 story as a moment in the history of photography. Newest first, and it runs right up to now. The quotes are pulled out here so there is nothing to click unless you want the source.
Physicl joins the Alliance for OpenUSD
Announced at SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles: Physicl joins as a General Member alongside ByteDance, Huawei and Unity. The first standards quote of the Physicl chapter — and the same argument as the IKEA years, now pointed at simulation physics rather than product images.
Physicl is built on open standards, and OpenUSD is central to how we handle 3D data for simulation, where interoperable physics matters most. We're joining AOUSD to contribute to the Physics Working Group and help push toward a normative physics schema that lets simulation data move reliably between tools. For an industry where the value of a simulation depends entirely on the quality of the data behind it, a shared standard is what lets everyone build on the same foundation instead of reinventing it alone.
Alliance for OpenUSD — launch quotes
IKEA's quote in the AOUSD launch release, next to Pixar, Adobe, Apple, Autodesk and Epic.
We have been searching for a non-proprietary standard format to author and store 3D content to connect our value chain even closer, and develop home furnishing solutions to a lower price. AOUSD is a big step in that direction.
Virtual Photography: Artificial Intelligence, In-game, and Extended Reality
An open-access scholarly book on the state of photography. It reconstructs the 2014 news wave, names Martin as its source, and reads the whole episode as a turning point in what counts as a photograph. 243 pages; the IKEA passage is in the chapter on CGI and advertising.
As these stories bounced around media channels, the source of the story turned out to be IKEA itself. It was Martin Enthed, Swedish head of digital management at IKEA, who in an interview given to Computer Graphics Society website revealed the 75% statistic.
3D Commerce working group
Listed with Wayfair and the other retailers backing the 3D Commerce effort.
IKEA has been working on large scale photoreal 3D for over 10 years and has been promoting open standards and collaboration all along. We are excited to contribute to this group to make the use of 3D easier and faster to meet the demands of our customers.
IKEA joins the Khronos Board of Directors
On IKEA stepping up from member to board, alongside Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony and Valve.
IKEA truly believes that future interactions with our customers will be increasingly spatial/3D-based… we see it as crucial that this interactive 3D revolution is based on open standards — to make it pervasive and accessible.
Technology: The importance of 3D standardization
Anne Flynn Wear on the Khronos 3D Commerce working group — 70 companies, IKEA among them — framed around the idea that 3D needs its JPEG. Martin quoted alongside Khronos, Wayfair and Houzz, on what the absence of a standard actually costs. The live page blocks automated readers but opens fine in a browser; full text also kept in the repo under references/.
We have to devise individual solutions for each problem that comes up. We compare them to putting Lego pieces together in different formats depending on the solution that's needed.
IKEA use of CGI — case study transcript (PDF)
Three-page transcript of the Chaos case-study video — the fullest published account of how the photographers and the 3D artists taught each other.
A very nice thing is that we internally, when we talk images, we are very passionate and we try to make them look as good as possible.
Building 3D with Ikea
The CG trade press pointing its readers at the CGSociety interview on the day it ran — “Kirsty Parkin interviews Martin Enthed from Ikea Communications on his team's herculean modelling and rendering work for the Ikea Catalogues.”
2016–17 — what happened next
The kitchen was published as an experiment and then kept changing in public for eight months, driven by what people asked for. The first and loudest request was meatballs. The later drops — the 2017 catalogue in VR in August, cat mode three weeks after — went almost entirely uncovered: by then they were patch notes rather than news. It ended with an award.
Update: Adding Meatballs
The full update log, still on Steam: meatballs and veggie balls (25 Apr), the extractor hood and both ovens (19 May), frying them (8 Jun), pencils and teleport (21 Jul), the IKEA Catalogue 2017 in VR (8 Aug), cat mode (29 Aug), and cinnamon buns to finish (2 Dec).
Since we published the small IKEA Kitchen VR experience the most frequent request have been; we want meatballs! Of course we listened!
IKEA's meatball-cooking VR kitchen is peak virtual reality
The meatball drop got its own news cycle, a day after it shipped.
Instead IKEA built a ‘virtual kitchen experience’ that missed the best part of being a fancy Swedish kitchen: meatballs. That grievous mistake has now been fixed, so you can go ahead and cook meatballs to your heart's content. And if you're one of them vegetarian folk, IKEA even has veggie meatballs.
People can't stop playing with Ikea's meatball-slinging VR experience
The marketing trade press on what happens when you ship the silly feature people actually asked for.
The VR meatball eating addition is paying off for the brand because people are borderline obsessed with it… one person admitted to spending 45 minutes throwing meatballs and said they “loved every second.” … So if a brand is looking for people to actually use their VR attempt, just add some meatballs.
Meatballs implemented in the IKEA VR kitchen
Japan covered the meatballs too.
IKEA has added meatballs — and veggie balls — to the VR kitchen it published on Steam, in response to the most frequent request from players.
Virtual Reality — Into the Magic
IKEA's own account of the year, written after the August updates — it describes browsing the catalogue and finding the pencils in the kitchen. It also puts a number on the reach: the test app generated 1,200 articles around the world. highlights.ikea.com no longer resolves — this is the Internet Archive's copy, and the full text is also kept locally in the repo under references/.
The release was made in the name of co-creation. We hoped to receive feedback from people on what they wanted to do more of and if the virtual reality experience was of interest. Surprisingly, the most wanted feature was — meatballs!
VR Awards 2017 winners
The first VR Awards, London. IKEA's name sits in a winners list alongside Oculus, Google and Penrose Studios.
Most Creative use of Marketing in VR: IKEA VR by IKEA
VR Awards 2017 — winners and finalists
The organiser's own record of the ceremony, 9 October 2017.
VR Awards 2017 · Monday, 9 October 2017 · London, United Kingdom.
Acceptance speech — Most Creative Use of Marketing in VR
Martin on stage collecting it, 3 minutes.
Martin on stage at the first VR Awards, collecting the award for the kitchen. 3 minutes.
Winner interview — VR Awards 2017
The backstage interview afterwards.
2016 — the VR kitchen launches
On 5 April 2016 IKEA put a virtual kitchen on Steam for the HTC Vive — free, and openly labelled an experiment. Built in Unreal Engine 4 with Allegorithmic. The team hoped for a few hundred downloads; within three hours people were uploading their own films of it. It reached #5 in Vive apps in a month, #1 branded app by five, and won Most Creative Use of Marketing in VR at the 2017 VR Awards.
Ikea Embraces Virtual Reality With Virtual Kitchen for HTC Vive
Business press reading it as a retailer moving first rather than a gimmick.
Ikea made a kitchen showroom in VR
Launch-day coverage, on the shrink-to-a-child's-height trick and opening the drawers.
Ikea Has Already Found A Great Use For Virtual Reality
“Already” — written while most VR coverage was still about games.
Ikea kitchen design goes VR
US metro daily pickup — the story reaching general readers.
IKEA Leaps Into The VR Retail Race
Quotes Martin on hoping shoppers would share what they built with each other.
Ikea VR Experience Pilot Program Wants To Let You Shop In Virtual Reality
“We also see IKEA VR Experience as an opportunity to co-create with people all around the world,” — Martin, quoted directly.
IKEA launches VR 'Kitchen Experience' for HTC Vive on Steam
The fullest quote of the wave — Martin asking users to submit ideas for how to improve the virtual kitchen — plus the Unreal Engine 4 and Allegorithmic detail the consumer press left out.
Ikea Brings VR to Kitchen Remodelling
The marketing trade press take.
Dip into Your Private VR Kitchen with IKEA
One of the many smaller tech sites that carried it.
IKEA VR Experience
The thing itself, still on Steam a decade later.
2014 — English-language press
CGSociety published Kirsty Parkin's interview with Martin in June 2014. The 75% figure in it was picked up at the end of August and ran for weeks. Ordered roughly by reach — and note the pattern: an alarmed headline over a piece that is, inside, largely admiring of the craft.
Most Of The Pics In Ikea's Catalog Are Computer Generated
The widest reach of the wave, and a straight retelling of the CGSociety interview.
Say it ain't so: Ikea reveals 75% of catalog images are CGI
The most alarming headline of the lot, over a straight explainer — most of the piece is Martin on the craft: why kitchens are the hardest room, and why shipping white goods around the world to photograph them stopped making sense.
75% Of Ikea's Catalog Is Computer Generated Imagery
Fast Company on the scale of the shift — 25,000 rendered product images, and photography moving from the default to the exception.
Why Ikea's Mostly Computer Generated Catalog Will Soon Be the Norm
The one headline that says out loud what the others only imply — IKEA is early rather than deceptive, and the rest of the industry is heading the same way.
Most of Ikea's Product Images Are Computer-Generated
Slate's design desk sets the milestones in order — the Bertil chair in 2006, the first full CG room in 2010, 12% by 2012 — and reads the shift as a design decision rather than a trick.
75% of Photos in IKEA Catalogues Are Actually Computer Rendered
Culture press pickup, carrying the story well outside the design and photography world.
Most Pics In IKEA Catalogues Aren't Photos, They're 3D Renders
Traces the climb from 12% of product images in 2012 to 75%, and credits the bank of 25,000 reusable 3D models as the reason it scaled.
When You Flip Through an IKEA Catalog, 75% of the 'Photography' You See is CGI
The photography press treats it as a technical feat rather than a scandal, and retells the 2009 turning point: the images art directors rejected as “just terrible” were the photographs, and the ones they praised were the renders.
CGIKEA
The best pun anyone managed out of the whole affair.
2014 — non-English press
It travelled well beyond the English-speaking web — German, French, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese coverage inside about ten days.
75 Prozent CGI: Das sind gar keine Fotos im Ikea-Katalog
German IT press. “Those aren't photos at all in the IKEA catalogue.”
75 % du catalogue IKEA est en images de synthèse
French tech press, and the most quote-heavy of the French pickups.
75% des images des produits Ikea sont en 3D
The French CG trade press — by some distance the most technically detailed coverage in any language, and the one that talks to the industry rather than about it.
75% du nouveau catalogue IKEA est fait d'images 3D
VICE France, carrying it to a general readership.
Le catalogue d'Ikea est aux trois-quarts bidonné
“Three-quarters faked” — the most accusatory headline in the whole wave, in any language.
Insolite : 75% des images de produits IKEA sont des rendus 3D
Filed under “insolite” — curiosities.
Rzuć aparat i ucz się grafiki 3D
“Put down the camera and learn 3D” — Polish tech press, advice to photographers rather than alarm.
As renderizações 3D no catálogo da Ikea
Brazilian Portuguese coverage.
IKEA's catalog furniture is 75% CG
The Japanese tech press, whose reporter admits that even once told which images are CG, they cannot pick them out.
宜家傢俬產品目錄的照片，有 75% 原來都是 CG！
Traditional Chinese coverage out of Hong Kong.
IKEA亮眼家居图 75％电脑制作
Simplified Chinese — about as far from Älmhult as the story got.
2012 — the first wave
Two years earlier the Wall Street Journal went behind the scenes in Älmhult, when the number was still 12%. That round set up the second one.
IKEA's New Catalogs: Less Pine, More Pixels
The story that started it. Paywalled.
IKEA catalog will be 25 percent 3D renders by next year
Reporting the plan to reach a quarter of the catalogue — a target that turned out to be far too modest.
Ikea Uses Fake, Digitally Created Rooms Inside Its Catalog
Gizmodo's first take, before the tone shifted — the same facts, framed as trickery rather than as the future.
Ikeas nya katalog har kommit – men alla bilder är inte äkta
The story landing at home, in Swedish.
“75% of the IKEA catalog is CGI”
Bojan Blagojević, 2020
In June 2020 an artwork went on sale called “75% of the IKEA catalog is CGI”. It was a digital painting, sold as a print, by the Serbian artist Bojan Blagojević, priced at €250 on Ungalleried — a small online gallery for emerging artists run from Cascais in Portugal. The listing described work “shaped by a fascination with computer-generated processing… at once man-made in terms of its perception and machine-made in terms of its production”, which is a fair description of an IKEA catalogue too. It was still listed sixteen months later. The gallery has since closed and the page is gone, so the trail stops there — which means it may well be hanging in someone's home right now, quite possibly above an IKEA sofa.
Artwork © Bojan Blagojević. Shown here in good faith while permission is sought; it will be removed on request.