Before opening in SoHo, IKEA offered New Yorkers instructions for city life

IKEA’s new SoHo store is still being assembled. Outside, the brand is already offering instructions for putting together a life in New York.

Across the building’s façade, oversized versions of IKEA’s familiar assembly guides address the tasks that come with living in the city. Carrying laundry, making room in a small apartment and planning an affordable date all become projects with a few illustrated steps.

The campaign introduces the upcoming store at 529 Broadway, on the corner of Spring Street. Its message, “New possibilities are coming soon to SoHo,” sits beneath guides that give those possibilities a practical meaning.

Small apartments set the brief

Limited space gives several of the posters their starting point. “How to live in a shoe box” pairs KALLAX shelving with BLÄDDRA storage boxes, treating a cramped home as a problem of arranging the available room.

Another guide addresses dividing a studio into separate sleeping spaces. The furniture becomes part of how people negotiate privacy and shared living within the same apartment.

The campaign carries that attention to rented homes into its guide to retrieving a security deposit. Hooks that require no drilling offer a way to hang belongings while keeping walls intact.

These are modest household decisions, but together they describe the kind of needs a neighbourhood furniture store could answer. IKEA introduces its range through the circumstances in which someone might use it.

Dating and laundry receive their own instructions

The guides also reach into the routines that surround a home.

For laundry trips, the blue FRAKTA bag supplies a familiar way to carry clothes. An inexpensive date takes shape with a blanket, an insulated bag and a heart-shaped cushion. The products appear as useful pieces of an outing.

The headlines bring another layer of humour. “How to more than one night stand” plays on the difference between a brief romantic encounter and a bedside table. Adding furniture for two people gives the phrase its household interpretation.

“How to sleep in the city that never sleeps” returns New York’s nickname to the bedroom. Bedding supplies the practical answer to a line associated with the city’s restless energy.

The numbered diagrams keep these situations easy to follow. Their calm, orderly format gives everyday complications the appearance of something that can be worked through one step at a time.

A building under construction becomes the manual

The campaign’s location completes the connection. Its assembly guides cover the very building where IKEA is preparing to open.

People passing the façade can learn where the store will be and encounter examples of what it will offer. The construction stage becomes part of the introduction, with the brand’s instruction format accompanying a shop that is itself taking shape.

The SoHo location is planned to open in autumn or winter 2026. It will use a smaller urban format, offering home-furnishing accessories and expert planning support for kitchens, bathrooms and closets.

Before that opening, IKEA has given its future neighbours a preview through problems close to home. The façade starts with the lives around the store, from laundry bags and rental deposits to the question of making room for someone else.

Credits

IKEA SoHo store-opening campaign (2026). Brand IKEA. Agency DAVID New York. Campaign displayed on the façade of the upcoming IKEA store at 529 Broadway, at the corner of Spring Street, SoHo, Manhattan, New York, United States. The outdoor executions adapt IKEA’s assembly-manual illustrations into guides for everyday city life.