What is the famous Blekinge White? Why do people want it? What colour is it even anyway! We discuss this and more today.
Que?
Blekinge White is the name of a famous IKEA fabric. Best known for being used in their Ektorp slipcovers, this was a pure white cotton duck fabric. And sadly, the tense is correct as well.
Pourquoi?
Because it was white, it was bleachable, and it gave you a chance at having that elegant country / shabby chic home. Did I mention it was machine washable? Many a mother-blogger took up and embraced this fabric for giving them a chance at having a white sofa even with kids and pets. Plus, a slipcover was pretty cheap.
Shockingly, Blekinge White was never the brilliant stark white that you might have seen around the internet. Blekinge White as it came from IKEA was always an off-white colour, with hints of beige. If you’ve heard of Pantone or happen to have a Pantone book on you, it would be Pantone colour Marshmallow, 11-4300.
This is it:
How do I get it?
Sadly, unless you’re lucky enough to stumble upon one of the Ektorp covers on Ebay or Gumtree, you’re out of luck. IKEA discontinued the Blekinge White at the end of 2015 (except for the lucky Brits). Their replacement is the Vittaryd White, which is a polyester blend and not the same colour. It also costs 3x the price of the original Blekinge White.
Don’t despair, though, we’ve recently updated our popular Gaia White fabric to be closer to the Blekinge White. We’ll be using Pantone colour Bright White, 11-0601.
Here’s a showdown shot:
Of course, if you’re worried, I’d suggest heading over to our fabric samples page and grabbing a pack of our 100% cotton Gaia fabrics. If the Gaia White isn’t close enough to what you dreamed of, you could even bleach the covers for that “white” white look, and it’s available for every sofa model that we make slipcovers for (and even some custom sofas that we don’t show on our website 😉
Hope this helps, now go forth and live your dreams of your classic white sofa!
2 Comments
by Geoff
Hi Mr Chris,
Thank you for an interesting article on the Ektorp family.
We have gone another much harder route of buying a current Ektorp ‘white’cover in glorious Poly-cotton and modifying it painfully (pins) and paintstakingly (slightly smaller) that we used for our old 2 seater.
We have done the first which is a bit like a patchwork quilt at the sides of the back. We came to this desperate effort because the old chocky Brown 2 seaters were put out on the verandah by the then owner and are bleached/sun damaged rather badly, a bit like self. Now we have them back again, hiding under throws.
All this preamble is leading too a question!
Where o where can we get a meter or two piece of the current IKEA white Ektorp fabric or a same colour/similar fabric for our second sofa? Any ideas?
Geoff and Anne
by Chris
Hey Geoff & Anne! Glad you liked my article 🙂
I don’t think you could get any of the original IKEA fabrics, but we do sell our fabrics by the meter. Check it out here: https://comfort-works.com/products/slipcover-fabric-by-the-meter
You might want to get samples of our Gaia White to make sure you’re happy with it first. Hope this helps!