Saudi Ikea: now you see her, now you don't Ikea faced criticism after it emerged it had airbrushed women from its annual furniture catalogue in Saudi Arabia Ikea faced its latest controversy about its foreign operations after it emerged it had removed images of women from its famous annual furniture catalogue in Saudi Arabia. The move stoked controversy in Sweden, home to the world's largest furniture retailer by sales, where the country's trade minister, Ewa Björling, complained: "You can't remove or airbrush women from reality." It also raises further questions about the Swedish flat-pack-furniture retailer's ability to keep its culture intact as it expands into ever more markets. Ikea, which has three stores in Saudi Arabia run as a franchise operation, is looking to increase the numbers of its stores worldwide by up to 50 per cent by 2020 from its current 300 shops. Ikea said it regretted the airbrushing - first reported by Sweden's Metro newspaper, and which included a bathroom scene of a mother, father and child in a bathroom where the woman was removed from the Saudi catalogue - and that it did not "accept any kind of discrimination." It added that it would review the way it produced its annual catalogue. The controversy comes after a spying scandal earlier this year in France and a bribery case in Russia two years ago, which prompted Ikea's chief executive to defend the privately owned company's culture and say it would continue to open up gradually. The issue with the Saudi catalogue came as Ikea announced plans to stop selling all types of lightbulbs except for LEDs as it pushes consumers to embrace green technology. The company will also change about 1.2m bulbs lighting its stores for LEDs over the next few years in a move that should cut 10 per cent off its annual electricity bill, saving the world's biggest furniture retailer by sales €15m-€20m annually. Ikea is touting the better quality of light from LEDs, the cheaper running cost over their lifetime of 20 years and the fact they do not contain the harmful chemical mercury - unlike current energy-efficient lights, known as compact fluorescent lamps. Ikea is also pushing the lights" greater flexibility. They are able to change colours to match different times of day and can fit into small spaces to illuminate hard-to-reach parts of kitchens or homes. Steve Howard, Ikea's chief sustainability officer, told the Financial Times: "Lighting becomes much more exciting. The old technology is pretty inflexible. People don't like waiting some seconds or minutes for full brightness. If people can see how good LEDs can be we think they will swap. LEDs have been well regarded by technology experts but have struggled to win over consumers, in large part because they cost more to buy. But they consume less energy, meaning that over their lifetime LEDs work out as considerably cheaper than traditional incandescent or halogen bulbs and marginally cheaper than CFLs. Ikea's move, which was endorsed by the WWF conservation pressure group, is only part of the Swedish retailer's attempts to reduce its emissions and those of its customers. It has recently started a pilot project in Milton Keynes in the UK to market solar panels, which it intends to sell for under the current market price of £8,000-£15,000 for an entire house. It is also aiming to produce enough renewable energy to offset the power it consumes globally - and is close to that goal in Scandinavia already. The lightbulb transition is taking until 2016 because some bright light sources are currently not as good in LED and less effective in some functions such as dimming, Mr Howard said. But he said Ikea was now throwing all its supply chain and purchasing power behind the technology and stopping investments in other types of lightbulbs. The direction is different when you are 100 per cent behind a technology . . . The advantage of pushing everything behind it with the scale we have is that we will be able to bring down the cost," he added. Samantha Smith, leader of WWF's global climate and energy initiative, called on other companies to follow suit. Moves like this can spread the word . . . much more quickly and increase the market size for LEDs further and quicker. Ikea has set an example for this sector and WWF would like to see other corporates step up to the plate.