Founded in 1964 by Sir Terence Conran, it merged with a number of other retailers in the 1980s to create Storehouse plc, before the latter sold Habitat to the Ikano Group, owned by the Kamprad family, in 1992.

Sir Terence Conran founded Habitat in London in 1964, opening his own store to market his Summa range of furniture.

[3] The first store was opened in Fulham Road in Chelsea[4] by Conran, his then wife Caroline, Philip Pollock and the model Pagan Taylor.

[5] This store became the Habitat template, with its quarry tiled floor, whitewashed brick walls, white-painted wooden-slatted ceilings and spotlights creating a feeling of space and focusing attention on the product.

[8] The following year it purchased the business of Lupton Morton, which mostly supplied furniture to offices and corporations but also made pieces by other designers,[9] and in 1970 acquired the retail chain Straker-Bedser.

[3] In October 2009, following several years of trading losses, the Kamprad family, which owns Ikano, put the company up for sale,[12] and it was sold to Hilco, a restructuring specialist, in December 2009 with the Kamprad family writing off the debts of the company and providing €50 million (£45 million) of working capital while Hilco paid about €15m.

Home Retail Group retained about 100 staff at the London stores and around 50 in head office, including many of Habitat's in-house designers, buyers and merchandisers.

This was because the building it had occupied since 1973 is being redeveloped under plans submitted by the landowner Cadogan Estates and approved by the Kensington & Chelsea Council.

In 2018, the business opened two new standalone stores - one in Westfield White City as part of the extension of the shopping centre which was planned to attract more homeware and lifestyle brands and the other in Brighton; this was the location of one of Habitat's most successful Homebase concessions.

[26] The site was launched in November 2009, based on an E-commerce application from BT Expedite, with a back-end by LShift, after a period when only a small number of products were available online.

[27] Following feedback, the company announced a new website in January 2011, offering online delivery to UK, Germany and Republic of Ireland.