Making the report

The IKEA Life at Home Report gives us the opportunity to dig deeper into life at home around the world, and how we can make it better. Over the last decade and more, it’s become one of the largest and most distinctive research projects of its kind, involving a mix of approaches and partners to explore the needs and dreams of people all over the world.

Home visits are at the heart of everything we do at IKEA, including the Life at Home Report. Meeting people where they live gives us a greater and more empathetic understanding of the challenges they face at home. In addition to home visits, our research methodology always includes a nationally representative survey across a wide range of countries, and we work with world-class research agencies to ensure that our data collection is robust and representative.

The Life at Home Report began in 2014 exploring the practical aspects of home, and over the years has expanded into the emotional landscape of how people live. One of the most distinct qualities of the Life at Home Report is exploring how people feel about where they live, and not just what they do there.

This blend of functional and emotional insights helped to develop a framework which presents eight needs for a better life at home. This year, the research survey was based on these eight needs of home.

Report methodology

For the 2024 report, a nationally representative sample of 38,630 people aged 18+ was surveyed across 39 countries. We surveyed over 1000 people each from 37 countries and over 500 from two. Quantitative surveys were conducted by YouGov using the online CAWI (computer-assisted web interviewing) method. Data was collected from May to June 2024.

Data for each country was weighted according to the dimensions of gender, age and geography so that the results were representative of the population in the target group. Each country has the same weight in global results. Chile and New Zealand were given added weight to make sure their results were equal to those from other countries despite their lower numbers of respondents.

Qualitative data was gathered from 24 home ethnographies and 36 digital immersions in three countries: India, Spain, and the USA. For story gathering, six additional home visits were conducted in the same three countries: two in Delhi, two in Barcelona, and two in New York.

Our trend research has identified a range of cultural trends that correlate with the themes within the report. The context was identified through environmental scanning across STEEPV (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economical, Political, and Values) factors. The Signals of change section uses internal foresight research based on weak signal scanning.

More than a decade of research

Between 2014 and 2024, more than 250,000 people have been surveyed. In most years, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews in addition to the surveys. Qualitative methods included home interviews, online communities, mobile ethnography, and online in-depth interviews.

As qualitative insights were critical in all reports, during the 2020 pandemic, home visits were conducted online so that the research could continue.

We thank C Space, Crowd DNA, Edelman, Given Agency, Human Futures Studio, Ipsos, Mindspark, United Minds and YouGov, who have partnered with us at different stages of the Life at Home Report from 2014 to today.