IKEA enhances its 2014 Catalog with an AR app to let customers preview furniture in their home

To promote the launch of its 2014 catalog, IKEA has released an AR app that “builds in” furniture of the new collections into the room—virtually. The IKEA Catalog app saves the time and pain of choosing the furniture in-store and returning the purchase due to a bad room fit. With the app, consumers will be able to see how a new sofa or a chair integrates into the interiors without actually taking the piece of furniture into the house.

IKEA adds the virtual twist to 90 products featured in the paper-back catalogue of around 300 pages. They can be found on 50 pages with a special plus (+) symbol that, when scanned, unlocks additional info on a mobile device.

Using the IKEA Catalog app, a person scans the selected product in the printed IKEA 2014 catalogue (on the page with the + symbol), puts the paperback catalogue on the floor so that the app could gauge the size of the room, and then gets the 3D model of the product virtually popping up in the room. By overlaying digital models of IKEA’s furniture over the real-life interiors of the room, consumers can see how the product may fit into the home décor— as a kind of a virtual «furniture» test-drive.

The app launches on August 25, both for Android and iOS. The consumers can see how it works in the promotional video above. The catalogue is now rolling out across the world—it has already arrived to the U.S., Taiwan and Japan, and will launch in other markets later in August (in most countries) and September.