Inflatable furniture: a look back at its colourful history

Convinced by the concept’s potential, Ikea made an unusually large investment and partnered with Dranger to develop the technology. The resulting collection, called a.i.r—short for “Air Is a Resource”—was launched in 1997 and later promoted heavily in the 2000 Ikea catalogue. Key pieces included the Rolig easy chair and Innerlig sofa, both lightweight enough to be carried with ease and compact enough to fit into near-flat packages. Ikea estimated that the concept could reduce material consumption for a sofa by as much as 85 per cent and transport volume by up to 90 per cent.

Despite the excitement, the reality proved less promising. The furniture was more expensive to manufacture than expected, attracted dust because of its plastic surfaces and tended to shift around showroom floors. More critically, customers struggled with inflation and air retention. Many used warm air to inflate the furniture, causing it to lose firmness as the air cooled, while faulty valves led to gradual deflation. A comfortable sofa at the start of the week could become a sagging shell by the weekend.

By 1999, high return rates and disappointing sales led Ikea to discontinue the project. Children’s inflatable products enjoyed somewhat greater success, but the company ultimately abandoned the a.i.r concept altogether in 2013.

Ikea’s return to the world of inflatable furniture is testament to the company’s willingness to innovate even in the face of failure, and it’s clear they've learnt a lesson or two from the a.i.r range. The PS 2026 chair, designed by Mikael Axelsson, has a washable cover that does not attract dust, and the metal frame prevents the chair from bouncing off into the aether like its older sibling.

Yet, this is only a vignette in the history of inflatable furniture. That technology harks back all the way to 1946, when engineer Walter Bird invented the “radadome”, an inflatable structure primarily comprising fibreglass and neoprene. It served as a lightweight, waterproof way to shield military radars from harsh weather conditions in the Arctic. Later, an employee of American chemical company Gallowhur Chemical, William H. Miller Jr, designed one of the earliest inflatable chairs. Made from vinylite and rope netting, it reflected a broader post-war trend in which new materials and manufacturing techniques developed during wartime found their way into domestic products.

Inflatable furniture came into its own during the 1960s, buoyed by the era’s fascination with plastics, mobility and Space Age design. Among its most influential proponents was Quasar Khanh, whose transparent 11-piece PVC Aerospace Collection transformed pneumatic furniture into a symbol of futuristic living. His designs captured the optimism of the period and helped establish inflatable furniture as a legitimate design category.

In case you missed it: Quasar Khanh: A golden legacy

Another landmark arrived in 1967 with the launch of the Blow Chair, created for Zanotta by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi and Carla Scolari. Widely regarded as the first mass-produced inflatable armchair, the Blow Chair distilled the movement’s core ideals: affordability, portability and a playful rejection of conventional furniture. Its bulbous, air-filled form embodied the era's fascination with new materials and informal living.

While inflatable furniture never fully entered the mainstream, it has continued to inspire designers, from experimental seating to contemporary reinterpretations such as Prada’s transparent cube created in collaboration with Verpan and designed by Verner Panton, or even the playful Jell-o inflatable chairs, shaped just like the brand’s jelly moulds, released in 2024.

In 2014, Luis Pons of Luis Pons Design Lab created an “inflatable office” with a budget of just $999, armed with inflatable rafts, pool mattresses, bakery carts and ready-made inflatable chairs. The rafts and carts served as room dividers and storage spaces, while a few inflatable stools did double duty as a lamp installation.

Though materials have evolved over the years, the appeal of inflatable furniture remains much the same: creating lightweight, adaptable and visually striking pieces with little more than air, a transparent shell and a touch of whimsy.

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