Home furnishing retailer Ikea is planning an update for its iOS and Android apps that will allow customers to fit furniture in their home before ordering. Using augmented reality, customers can place up-to 90 products in the room virtually for size, shape, colour and positioning. Ikea plans to launch the 2014 Ikea Catalogue app for both platforms on 25 August.

To get the AR part of the app to work, customers will need to put the physical Ikea catalogue in the space where they want to test the product. The app will then use the size of the catalogue against the size of the room, and will scale the products on to the screen. The 90 products available through the app catalogue include Ikea sofas, chairs, beds, bookcases, chests of drawers and desks. 

“Our customers want to be able to test out whether the products they’ve been inspired by in our catalogue will work in their own homes – particularly when it comes to larger pieces of furniture," said Peter Wright, country marketing manager, Ikea UK & Ireland. "Offering a way of using mobile technology to enable to test products means the technology has a practical purpose and really helps customers visualise the way their homes could look."

Ikea says the main goal of the app is to help customers to avoid buying the wrong size furniture. According to the company's research, "many customers suffer from 'Square peg, round hole syndrome' as 14 per cent  say they’ve bought the wrong-sized furniture for their rooms and over 70 per cent say they don’t really know how big their own homes are."

In further use of the app, the print version of the Ikea Catalogue will also have 50 pages that can be scanned with the mobile app to receive additional product information, videos and alternative views of products.