Ikea POÄNG Armchair > Reviews (4)

Ikea – the best thing to come out of Europe! – Ok maybe I exaggerate slightly, but I do love the store, and many of the products they sell, and over the years a fair few Ikea items have made their way into our house.

One such item is the wonderful Poang Chair.

So... what the *&$*!**? is a Poang chair I hear you ask and why is it so special?

Ahhh well Poang is a particular design of chair manufactured by Ikea. What you get is a simple one piece (looking) wooden frame made of layered up wood bent into shape and fitted with a cover. Because of the way the Poang chair is designed, it’s a very lightweight chair that can be moved around easily and that has a sort of bounce to it when you sit on it.

Poang chair frames come in a variety of colours – Birch or Oak or black/brown, and then you can choose the cover you want as well in a variety of fabrics and colours. Our chair is Beech and has a cream cotton seat cover. Ideally I think we’d have chosen cream leather but this isn’t available so we opted for the cream cotton instead which looks nice and can be removed to wash it.

Actually I should just clarify something. Poang is the range... you have the classic chair (described above), a rocking chair, a child’s version (the classic but in miniature), and a footstool designed to work with the classic chair.

The Poang chair is a low chair. It isn’t a cosy comfy armchair that you curl up in, but neither is it a chair that you sit ‘on’. You definitely sit ‘in’ this if you get my drift. What I mean, is that when you sit down, you do feel cosy even though it’s not a big floppy armchair. And the gentle rocking motion that you get from the design of the frame work adds to that comfortable feel. The shape gives you a very comfortable sitting position that is incredibly relaxing, and it’s very easy to drift off sat in one of these by the radiator (trust me I’ve done it a few times!).

My one problem with the Poang is that it isn’t the easiest of chairs to get out of once you’ve sat down in it, particularly if like me you’re mobility is limited. I do tend to limit myself to sitting in this only when my husband is around so that he can haul me up again when I need it.

Like many Ikea products this comes flat packed. It’s dead easy to put together though, and as Ikea’s instructions are actually well designed and written I doubt many people would have any difficulty with this as the assembly really is very easy.

Having a removable cover makes this a most practical chair too. Ours being cream does take a bit of a beating on occasions and we’ve thrown it in the washing machine following the instructions and it came out fine. No shrinkage either which is great because if it had, it wouldn’t have fitted again! The wood frame is nice and wipeable too.

I love how easy this is to move around. Being very light weight, makes it easy to move it from the dining room where it normally lives, into the lounge when we’ve more people visiting, and because of its shape it doesn’t take up vast amounts of space either.

I can slide it around the laminate floor in the dining room when I’m sweeping in there easily too which I like.

Despite its appearance and being so light weight this is a very sturdy chair. The Ikea website says it can hold weights up to 170kg (that’s about 26stone), so pretty impressive for something that looks quite fragile.

The price on these varies depending on which wood and cushions you go for. They start from an incredibly reasonable £59 and go up to £199 for the most expensive frame and covers. They’re modern and stylish and yet somehow, perhaps because of their simplicity they fit well with older styles too I think, and they look just as good in lounge, dining room, conservatory or nursery making them most versatile indeed.