Ikea's Augmented Reality Catalog Lets You Virtually Demo Its Furniture In Your Living Room

Ikea is trying to take some of the guesswork out of buying new furniture, and the company has turned to augmented reality for the solution.

Say you're browsing Ikea's 2014 catalog.

Once customers find a piece of furniture that interests them, all they have to do is open up the Ikea app, point their smartphone camera at the physical catalog for a quick size calibration, and they're ready to go.

The augmented reality technology allows for color accurate and size accurate pieces of virtual furniture to placed around the house. The app works by overlaying digital models of Ikea's furniture over real-time video of your house interior. By gazing at a smartphone or tablet screen, customers can see how each piece of furniture fits their home decor.

It's like a virtual test drive for furniture, and Ikea hopes the app will cut down on purchases returned due to faulty room dimension estimates.

The Ikea augmented reality app will be available August 25th, for both Android and iOS, but you can check out a video of the app below.