Ikea’s New Tool-Free Furniture Builds In Less Than Four Minutes

The flat-pack wizards at Ikea have finally done it. They’ve come up with a new type of fastener that lets you put together a piece in less than four minutes — and the only tool you’ll need is your hands.

When you purchase a new Regissör bookcase, you’ll notice one Ikea staple is missing from the box. There’s no tiny l-shaped Allen wrench, and the assortment of dowels and metal connectors has been reduced to a single one: the articulated wooden nubs you see above.

Pop these new dowels into the panels where required. After that, all you have to do is line them up with a routed notch in another panel, slide the dowels into the top of the opening, and then firmly push down to slide it into place. It’s a whole lot less fumbling and speeds up the assembly process; in their Regissör intro video, one Ikea staffer was able to put together a bookcase in about three and a half minutes.

Not everything in the Regissör line is tool-free, of course. Cabinet doors still need to be fastened with hinges and philips screws, for example. But now that there are a few tool-free Ikea products using these clever dowels, you can be sure that other pieces will start shipping with them, too.

You’ll probably still want to keep at least one tool at the ready just in case. It never hurts to have a small rubber mallet handy; tolerances aren’t always perfect on Ikea’s panels and every now and then you have to get a little persuasive to get them to fit together snugly.