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When you first see Ikea’s new home-training collection, you might not know what it is. According to the designers behind the project, that’s the point.
The product line (called Daljien, a slang word for “daily” in Swedish) includes 19 items built “to support movement in everyday life,” and is set to launch in January 2024. It’s the company’s first foray into the fitness space, and in true Ikea fashion, everything was created to be budget-friendly. Prices range from $3.99 to $135.
[Photo: Ikea]
While Daljien comprises the key elements you’d expect from a line of training gear—including dumbbells, a workout bench, and exercise mats—you could easily mistake any of the pieces for home decor. That’s because they’re designed to elevate the spaces they’re stored in rather than be hidden after use. For starters, unlike traditional dumbbells, Ikea’s are donut-shaped and mint green. The workout bench is made of a light bamboo wood with acrylic lacquer and could double as a living room coffee table. The two exercise mats, with their oval shapes and complimentary colors, look more like a set of rugs than anything you might find at the gym.
![Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor 1 Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor](https://i0.wp.com/images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_auto:best/wp-cms/uploads/2023/12/010-90993250-ikea-sportswear.jpg?resize=640%2C320&ssl=1)
[Photo: Ikea]
Akanksha Deo, one of four lead designers on the project, says Daljien is not meant to compete with established sports-gear brands. The collection’s muted green tones, rounded edges, and wood accents are intended to be aesthetically pleasing and “friendly.” Many of the products have dual-functionality as home storage or furniture.
“You could say it’s a bridge between your home and your active life,” Deo says. “What we found with the [other] products that we studied is that they were either too big, too gaudy, or too loud. They were something that didn’t really fit in your home space and you’d always have to hide them under your table or in your garage. We wanted to change that, and we wanted to explore how we could encourage people to live a more active life with the tools that we make for them.”
![Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor 2 Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor](https://i0.wp.com/images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_auto:best/wp-cms/uploads/2023/12/012-90993250-ikea-sportswear.jpg?resize=640%2C320&ssl=1)
Early concept sketches for the collection. [Image: Ikea]
Deo and her fellow designers discovered the consumer demand for a product line like Daljien several years ago during home visits in New York, Chicago, London, and Shanghai. Interviewees shared that the gym could be an uncomfortable environment, but home workouts posed their own challenges: limited space, time constraints, and the look of home-exercise products were all issues they cited. According to Ikea’s chief creative officer, Linus Karlsson, the need for better home-training equipment became even more pronounced during the pandemic, when going to the gym was no longer an option. That period had profound negative impacts on American exercise habits; in fact, a quarter of the population reported being inactive in 2022.
Now that pandemic-era restrictions have lifted, a number of people are trickling back to the gym. As of February 2023, visits to fitness locations were up 9% compared to the same month in 2020. But Americans still aren’t getting nearly enough daily activity. A survey released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in January 2023 found that only 28% of people are meeting the recommended standard for weekly exercise: a minimum of 150 minutes a week (or, 20 minutes a day) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity and at least two days a week of muscle-strengthening exercises.
![Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor 3 Ikea's new Daljien collection turns workout gear into decor](https://i0.wp.com/images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_auto:best/wp-cms/uploads/2023/12/004-90993250-ikea-sportswear.jpg?resize=640%2C320&ssl=1)
[Photo: Ikea]
Sarah Fager, another lead designer on the project, says the research behind Daljien revealed that motivation is one of the key issues preventing people from training. By incorporating these products into the home, her team wants to redefine how exercise is viewed—for example, that a workout doesn’t always need to be a trip to the gym or a hour-long run, and sometimes just a few minutes of movement is a valuable start.
Deo agrees that rigid ideas around exercise can often make an active lifestyle seem unachievable. Daljien is intended to help ease the pressure of those expectations.
“I think the main essence of this collection is to make [movement] really approachable,” Deo says. “You can define your own training and your own movement. It could be dancing with your friends, it could be running behind your kid, it could be sneaking in a 20-minute workout, it could be cleaning your floors—-it could actually be anything. I think the most beautiful message of this collection is that we don’t define movement for you. You define it yourself.”
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