If you thought IKEA’s bloated, glossy ‘donut’ lamp was already finished with its internet moment, think again. At CES 2026 the Swedish giant revealed a tech-forward refresh of Sabine Marcelis’s runaway hit: the VARMBLIXT lamp is now dimmable, colour-shifting and built on Matter so it will play with most modern smart-home setups.
What changed — and why it matters
Form-wise the lamp hasn’t betrayed its original slinky silhouette: it’s still that friendly circular shape that Instagram and TikTok adored. What’s new is very much under the skin (and behind the glass). Marcelis and IKEA replaced the original glossy orange shell with matte white glass that lets light glow from within rather than bounce off the surface. That matters because it changes how the lamp sculpts a room — softer, more atmospheric, less reflective.
Inside the lamp sits a dimmable, colour-changing module. Out of the box the light cycles through 12 carefully tuned presets — a slow, deliberate journey from crisp white through amber, pinks and lavenders back to white — but pair it with the IKEA Home Smart app (or another Matter hub) and you can select from more than 40 shades and fine-tune brightness. The BILRESA remote ships with the lamp for quick control, and the new range also includes a pendant version focused on the subtle shifts of white light.
Sabine Marcelis described the project as much about “very smooth transitions between colours” as about the lamp’s shape, and IKEA’s lighting product developer Chiara Ripalti framed it as an exploration of light’s emotional role: “With these new versions, we expand that idea with updates that let people explore emotion more freely.”
Smart-ready, but keep an eye on ecosystems
IKEA built the new VARMBLIXT on the Matter standard, which should make pairing straightforward with a lot of smart-home platforms. In practice, though, early hands-on notes from CES suggest a nuance: many of IKEA’s new, ultra-affordable smart products connect reliably, but some third-party ecosystems (notably Google Home in certain cases) have had hiccups recognising the behaviour of lane-specific controls like custom remotes. In short: the lamp will work in IKEA’s own app and should behave in most Matter-compliant setups, but if you live in a mixed-brand smart home expect to test pairing first.
That quirk underlines a larger point about smart-home transitions — software and community workarounds still matter as much as standards. Hobbyists and tinkerers have been keeping older devices working in creative ways as manufacturers shift cloud services and protocols, a reminder that interoperability is a moving target rather than a solved problem. For background on how that ecosystem complexity plays out, see the piece about reviving older smart thermostats in the wake of cloud changes Hobbyist Firmware Brings Old Nest Thermostats Back Online After Google Ends Cloud Support.
Price, timing and the rest of IKEA’s CES play
IKEA says the smart VARMBLIXT will land in stores and online in April 2026. Pricing varies by market: reports peg the UK price at about £55 while US listings suggest roughly $99 for the table-and-wall variants; the original non-smart version will remain on sale.
This launch is part of a far broader push: IKEA used CES to show a suite of tiny, cheap Matter-compatible parts — think $6 smart bulbs, $8 plugs and $6 remotes — plus affordable speakers like the $10 KALLSUP cube. The company’s move to make smart homes cheaper and more approachable is deliberate; if you want more of the context around IKEA’s wider Matter effort, read our coverage of IKEA’s 21-device strategy IKEA’s 21-Device Matter Push Makes Smart Homes Cheaper and Simpler.
A few other practical notes: the VARMBLIXT includes the BILRESA remote and supports standard Matter hubs (IKEA’s own DIRIGERA or other compatible bridges). There’s also a smart pendant lamp sibling that leans into nuanced white tones rather than flamboyant colour — useful if you want atmosphere without rainbow mode.
If you’re the sort of person who got hypnotised watching that first orange donut slowly shift and glow, this feels like the grown-up sequel: smarter, softer and built to slot into a growing (if imperfect) smart-home world. Marcelis and IKEA have hinted there’s more to come from this collaboration in 2027 — so the lamp’s second act may only be getting started.