2020 is the year everyone spent at home. They worked from home, educated their children from home. Their interests grew at home and they brought their hobbies home. Suddenly, attention was focused upon the home. As people rediscovered their homes, home organization and functionality became ever more important. At the same time, people’s spending patterns were changing. Ikea wanted to redirect attention to the positive attributes of the home—family, comfort, organization—as a theater in which life happens and within which you can write your own changing life stories. In a global pandemic that forced everyone to go home, spending money on the home was a worthwhile investment. There is always room for change.

We showed people that there’s always room for change. Because at Ikea we have 60+ storage and home organization solutions that gives you room to change as much as you want.

We created visuals made of the same room, repeating over and over again, but with every repetition, there was a small change that reflected change in life. Families grow and shrink: chairs at the dinner table increase and decrease. Children are born, grow, explore new interests, and leave home. Beds change in size, furniture and décor change. Celebration happens and ends. Then there is a new celebration. Someone brings home a small plant, then a bigger plant, then many plants and then, finally, a new plant shelf from Ikea. We’ll let you discover them in our visuals. The same room changed a million times, yet it was always full of life.

We launched 3 posters, each showing a different room, for a different audience.

The first visual is a kitchen: hosting a family, kids moving out, then parents discovering passion for cooking. The final room hosts many chairs at the table, including highchairs.

The second visual shows a bedroom changing from being a baby girl’s room, to a teenager’s, to a young adult’s, who eventually moved out.

The third visual shows a living room changing from a bachelor’s pad, to a divorcé’s living room, then returning to the dating life.

All the visuals were hand painted, creating a unique charm. We played on the exact repetition of the room with very slight changes in décor, showing that life is about small changes, as well as big ones, inviting the viewer to search for meanings behind the changes.

The visuals highlighted IKEA’s home solutions, which enable constant change as life happens.

People spent on average 2-3 minutes with each poster looking at all the rooms and discovering the changes and illustrating how life can grow richer, yet neater, by the day.

This campaign highlighted and celebrated the natural changes of life, and the role of furniture in framing these life changes. Set in a global pandemic where the home has become the center of life, the campaign raised awareness that, when properly organized and functional, a room not only changes with human changes but also facilitates change.