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L.A.’s Westside is finally getting its first Ikea outpost.
The furniture company known for its Swedish meatballs and blocky “Kallax” shelving units has found a home inside the old Helms Bakery complex in Culver City.
The store, slated to open this spring, will be its 11th in California and is the company’s first “city-center” store in Los Angeles.
It will occupy a roughly 40,000-square-foot portion of a lot formerly used by L.A. luxury furniture retailer HD Buttercup, which went out of business last year, said Wally Marks III, owner of the Helms complex.
Ikea chose to open a location in Culver City because residents “spend a significant amount of time commuting and are increasingly impacted by affordability challenges,” spokesperson Briana Lehman said in a statement.
“We’re bringing the IKEA experience closer to where people live, work, socialize, and shop—just in a smaller footprint,” Lehman said.
The Helms building was chosen because it is a historic Los Angeles destination known for its restaurants and home furnishings businesses, Lehman said.
The complex has other furniture stores, including a Scandinavian Designs store, The Rug Warehouse and Room and Board.
The expansion is part of Ikea’s strategy of opening smaller stores targeting urban customers.
Unlike the larger suburban stores in Burbank and Carson, this Ikea won’t have signature vibrant blue exterior walls. The exterior of the beloved Art Deco building won’t change, Marks said.
There will, however, be showrooms with fully-furnished home kitchens and bathrooms tailored for a local L.A. audience.
Meanwhile, unlike the tiny 9,000-square-foot Ikea store that opened in Arcadia’s Santa Anita Mall in 2024, the Culver City location will feature a food court.
In 2023, Ikea opened an 85,000-square-foot location in downtown San Francisco.
In 2025, Ikea U.S. reported $5.3 billion in sales, including $1.9 billion in e-commerce sales, according to a company statement.
Ikea U.S. interim Chief Executive Rob Olson said in the statement that the company was able to grow in 2025 “despite a challenging external environment.”
In 2026, the company plans to “build on this momentum, focusing on continued investment in the U.S. to make IKEA more affordable, accessible and sustainable,” Olson said. The company has set a goal of opening 10 new stores during its 2026 fiscal year, which began in September.
The 11-acre Helms complex is the former home of the Helms bakery, famous for the butter yellow trucks that once zoomed across Southern California delivering fresh bread and for being an official supplier for the 1932 Olympics – a distinction still proudly displayed on a rooftop sign.
The bakery shut down in 1969 because the founder did not want his company to unionize, The Times once reported. The Marks family real estate firm bought the property in 1972 and turned it into a center for home furnishings and antiques.
A new version of Helm’s Bakery opened inside the Helms Design District in November 2024 but closed in December due to lagging sales. That 14,000-square-foot lot has found its next tenant, Marks said.
No extra parking is being built for Ikea, but patrons can use the existing Helms Bakery lots across Venice Boulevard, Marks said. The store is a short walk from the Culver City light rail station and bus lines, he said.
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Iris Kwok
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