The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2025
IKEA's ÖDLEBLAD builds a pendant lamp from 60 Allen keys — flatpacked, no fittings
IKEA designer David Wahl turns the Allen key into a lamp: 60 identical birch parts click into a sphere that holds itself together by geometry alone.
IKEA of Sweden AB
What it had to solve
IKEA designer David Wahl wanted a flatpacked lamp that avoided unnecessary material and connected without any fittings. He looked for a form whose specific shape would give precision-cut parts with minimal waste, and landed on the Allen key — the small tool IKEA ships with almost every product — as both homage and engineering answer.
How it works
The Allen key has assembled millions of IKEA products, yet usually ends up forgotten in a drawer. With ÖDLEBLAD, IKEA of Sweden designer David Wahl let the tool step into the light: a spherical pendant lampshade whose 60 identical parts are each shaped like the famous L-shaped key, crafted from birch veneer and clicked together without a single fitting.
The trick is that the shape is the engineering. Each Allen-key part is precision-cut with notches so the pieces interlock and the whole sphere is held together by its own geometry. Wahl said the project was largely about designing the production itself: the key form gives precision-cut parts with minimal waste, and the result needs no screws, glue or fittings. To keep assembly sane, the lamp arrives flatpacked in five pre-assembled modules of twelve parts each.
ÖDLEBLAD went on sale in October 2025, with a white inner shade diffusing warm light through the layered birch veneer. Design press read it as a playful inside joke for anyone who has struggled through a late-night assembly session: IKEA turned its most ubiquitous tool into a sculptural centrepiece, renewable material and minimal metal throughout, and then delivered it with the joke that this time no Allen key is required.
Why it lands
- The part shape is the product: 60 identical Allen-key forms make one instantly readable object, with no extra ornament needed.
- Geometry replaces fittings, cutting parts count, tooling needs and assembly time in one move.
- It inverts IKEA's own ritual — the tool that assembles everything becomes the thing assembled, and is not even needed this time.
- Identical precision-cut parts minimise material waste, making the design of production part of the design of the product.
What it did
ÖDLEBLAD launched in IKEA stores and online from October 2025 with sales start varying by market, and was picked up by design and technology press worldwide as a tribute to the tool that built IKEA's flatpack universe. Wahl, who previously won a Red Dot for the STARKVIND air purifier, framed the lamp as material-smart construction in which form and production together minimise waste from the start.
What you can take
Let one recognizable object carry the whole design: when the shape itself does the joining, there is no ornament to add and no fittings to buy.
Since then
ÖDLEBLAD became one of IKEA's most-discussed product stories of late 2025, covered across design and technology media as a homage to the Allen key. The lamp joined IKEA of Sweden's lighting range as a 48 cm pendant, building on Wahl's reputation for expressive shapes and efficient construction that began with the Red Dot-winning STARKVIND. In early 2026 Ingka Group's newsroom still featured it alongside other IKEA lamp designs, pointing to a life beyond launch season as a catalogued product rather than a one-off concept.
Sources
- IKEA reinvents its most famous tool – this time it lights up your home
- IKEA turns the Iconic Allen Key into a Birch Veneer Lamp | ODLEBLAD
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