Not another damn light bulb. That’s what you might be thinking if you’ve been following smart-home tech for the past decade or, indeed, building out your own fortress of missed connections.

The first Nest thermostat launched in 2011, Philips Hue in 2012, the Amazon Echo in 2014. But for anyone who has spent long nights scrolling through IoT troubleshooting forums since then, here’s the latest: It’s finally time for a do-over. Everyone’s agreed that the open source interoperability standard Matter, which has Apple, Google, and Amazon signed up, is the answer, and Ikea has 20-odd new and improved devices to boost the case.

The Details

It’s very much back to basics with this new Matter-compatible line-up of 11 KAJPLATS smart light bulbs, five different sensors, a GRILLPLATS smart plug, and—likely to be the most popular of the lot—two BILRESA multi-device remotes. These will roll out to Ikea stores between this November and January 2026 in the UK and Europe, in many cases a straight swap for products in series like the TRÅDFRI range that run on the old Zigbee standard. A later launch, including the smart bulbs, is penciled in for US stores.

Photograph: Courtesy of Ikea

Photograph: Courtesy of Ikea

First, those two BILRESA remotes: handheld, cute, and ergonomic. There’s one with two buttons that can be set to trigger different functions across any Matter device: Switch bulbs on and off, change brightness and color, adjust the volume of a speaker, switch smart blinds up and down, switch between pre-set scenes. The scroll-wheel remote is more advanced: “We refer to this as the room remote,” says Ikea’s global head of product strategy David Granath. This one has three LEDs and allows you to quickly toggle between controlling three different groups of devices: lights, audio, whatever, via one remote. The BILRESAs will be available to buy standalone and in kits of three of the same format.

Second, the sensors. Again, these are replacing older Ikea iterations, with feature tweaks here and there. There’s a MYGGSPRAY indoor and outdoor motion sensor that can trigger smart lighting, a MYGGBETT door and window sensor which sends alerts to your phone, and a KLIPPBOK water leakage sensor for sinks and appliances. The TIMMERFLOTTE sensor checks temperature and humidity and the ALPSTUGA sensor adds air quality to that mix.

Photograph: Courtesy of Ikea

And then there are the KAJPLATS smart bulbs. Ikea is moving away from its current “warm white” focus by introducing dimmable, color, and white spectrum options with higher intensity spans. The range includes E27/E26 standard globe bulbs, compact E14/E12/E17 bulbs and GU10 spotlights with clear-glass options for just the white spectrum bulbs. The GRILLPLATS smart plug is designed for lamps and small appliances; it works with the remotes and motion sensors and tracks energy use. So far, so standard.

One key difference, aside from the Matter compatibility, is that prices are going to be lower across the board. Very low, in fact. In the UK, the KAJPLATS bulbs will go for between £4 and £9 each, versus £7 to £10 for TRÅDFRI bulbs. Pricing will be £3 for the dual button remote and £4 for the scroll-wheel remote, down from £5 and £7, respectively.

Meanwhile, four of the basic sensors will cost between £5 and £7 each and the higher-end ALPSTUGA air quality sensor will be £25, as compared to the £35 VINDSTYRKA it replaces. Ikea’s reps say prices will vary across Europe and the US, but that affordability is a priority worldwide. The idea is that the difference in price, if there even is one, between the smart devices and non-connected equivalents will be down to “a euro or two” per product, to motivate more of Ikea’s one billion in-store customers a year to build out smart homes.

The Long Road to the Matter Era

“I probably have well above 100 smart devices in my home, but I also have like 10 different hubs. I hate it,” says David Granath, Ikea’s global range manager for home electronics. “Right now I control some energy stuff through Homey, and I control my lights through Ikea Home smart, but then there’s something else somewhere else and I can’t get it to work together. That’s not a smart home. That’s a home for smart people, maybe, but that’s not where we want to be.”

Granath acknowledges that for “many, many years” the smart home has been “a vision” that gets talked about a lot but doesn’t really materialize. In the 2010s, the Zigbee protocol was the best the Ikea team could find for its first smart bulbs. The challenge of simultaneously connecting individual products via Touchlink—a Zigbee feature that allowed for linking smart devices—while also “building silos” between ecosystems was identified early on.

He points out that Ikea is on the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) board, and has been actively contributing to the development of the Matter platform since its 2019-2021 Project CHIP days: “It’s just now that lately we’ve been able, as a company, to take a strategic position to switch altogether.”

Last September, Ikea updated its DIRIGERA smart-home hub, which itself has been the focus of connectivity and compatibility headaches on the forums, with support for Matter. This includes functioning as a Matter bridge, connecting older Ikea devices—rhe ones based on Zigbee tech—to the wider ecosystem instead of rendering them total junk.

The Matter ecosystem is not truly universal yet; the industry continues to work towards it. Whole categories of connected products, such as smart security cameras, video doorbells, robot vacuum cleaners, and smart locks are waiting for Matter support. Enthusiasts have been digitally soldering together the gaps between best-in-class devices, made by different brands, for years at this point, if not decades for hardcore automation tinkerers.

Sadly, there’s not much here for the real smart-home heads. “The early adopters will obviously appreciate lower prices, and I think most will appreciate the interoperability, not having to buy a specific hub and actually being able to use what they have at home,” says Granath. “I think they will also like some of the improvements we’ve done on the remotes, not needing a separate remote for everything.” He’s also aware that for the vast majority of Ikea customers, “Matter doesn’t matter.” It’s simply the thing that gets them lower prices and, in theory, far fewer set-up snafus.

An Intelligent Home?

The ALPSTUGA air-quality sensor is probably the device pointing to the direction in which Ikea’s contributions to future smart homes are heading. Like its predecessor, the VINDSTYRKA, it can connect to Ikea’s air purifiers to automate fan speed depending on the levels of PM2.5 particulates in the indoor air, and this new iteration also adds CO2 monitoring.

cc by phPhotograph: Courtesy of Ikea

“We’re improving some of the sensors, taking in the feedback we’ve gotten along the way, trying to make them more useful,” Granath says. “I actually brought one home. I installed it in my living room, and my wife said ‘Oh another smart product,’ but I told her ‘OK, but keep an eye on the CO2 values. If it’s under a thousand, you’ll sleep better.’ Now she’s manically checking the levels, opening the doors and trying to get the number down.”

Another strand to explain why this is not, in fact, a techy Groundhog Day, reliving 2012 over and over again, is where AI now fits into the smart home: “Matter is one piece of that puzzle,“ Granath says. “It’s a good foundation in terms of technology to create this shift. And with AI maturing, we’re at the point where the infrastructure, the connectivity, and the actual intelligence will coincide and actually create that intelligent home we’re looking for.”

That said, he speculates we’re still around five years from the reality of a fully connected and intercompatible home containing smart sensors and cameras that understand the space, products that intuitively act on our behalf, and physical, inclusive, and “democratic” devices to help people from all generations interact with the home: remotes, voice assistants, and screens that blend in and just work rather than relying on smartphone apps.

No Rush

There is what Granath calls “a healthy friction internally” within Ikea around the development and launch of the new Matter-ready slate: “A lot of people out in retail are super excited because they get a lot of questions about this, right? And then you have some people that are always pushing simplicity and affordability so ‘Is this too complex? Is this affordable enough?’”

When the scale of this latest Ikea range was first teased this summer, some industry insiders suggested it was a milestone for Matter going mainstream. Granath compares the pace of smart home progress to another gradual tech evolution: “It’s taken longer, but if you take how we listen to music, we used to have bookcases full of CDs and now everyone’s streaming, and it just feels like a natural technological shift.”

He also stresses that Ikea is not approaching any of this innovation like a tech company, and works to its own timeframes. “At one point, I know our CEO [Jesper Brodin] was working on new strategies and asking Ingbar [Kamprad], our founder, ‘What’s the time perspective? Should I look five years or 10 years ahead?’ And Ingbar was saying ‘Well, look 50 or so,’” Granath says. “We’re not on the stock exchange, so we have that possibility. And to be fair, for 80 years we’ve been trying to fulfill people’s needs and dreams in their homes. It doesn’t matter if it takes a week or if it takes 20 years.”