Design

IKEA Recreates "Stranger Things," "Friends," and "The Simpsons" Living Rooms as Shoppable Tributes

The mega retailer turns living spaces from beloved pop-culture shows into a brilliant e-commerce catalog.

"The Room for everyone," IKEA's take on the Byers' home from "Stranger Things" Season 1. (Image courtesy IKEA.)

The Stranger Things Season 3 release date is just over a month away. But if you want to return to the now-famous Byers living room a little early, IKEA is offering you an odd, shoppable head start.

An e-commerce-fueled photoseries recreating rooms straight from three of pop culture’s favorite bingeable shows has just popped up on the mega retailer’s United Arab Emirates site, offering TV addicts a cheeky way to recreate the look of the well-worn living rooms featured in Friends, Stranger Things, and, perhaps most curiously, The Simpsons. 

While the famously tilted sailboat painting of America’s number-one cartoon family is not for sale on IKEA’s copyright-wary “Room for families” page, a frame, braided rug, and side table that would go along with their pink walls are all available (purple paint for the side table sold separately.)

 

IKEA's "Room for families" is straight out of "The Simpsons." (Image courtesy IKEA.)

Over in the “Room for mates” (aka the Friends set), solid approximations of Rachel and Monica’s cush, inviting furniture and near-endless throw pillows are also on offer. While it—as well as the other spaces here—don’t exactly embody the sort of aesthetic typically endorsed by Surface, we can’t help but find the pendant lamp overhanging the entrance to the terrace where the group spied on Ugly Naked Guy to be a tasteful lighting solution for its price.

The "Room for mates" captures Rachel and Monica's apartment from "Friends." (Image courtesy IKEA.)

And, finally, the “Room for everyone” (that is, the Byers living room as it appeared in Season 1) comes complete with the Christmas lights Joyce used for contacting her son in the Upside Down—a frankly brilliant design solution for a pressing functional problem. A simple coffee table and other appointments are also available to add to your home and eventually get turned to splinters as you fend off a faceless Lovecraftian terror with a baseball bat.

Right now this e-commerce offering is only live for UAE shoppers, but hopefully it will come stateside and, fingers crossed, eventually add Frasier Crane’s open, modern living space. We’d love to see how IKEA pulls off Martin’s beloved, weathered Lay-Z-Boy.

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