Like every job, working from home comes with its own ups and downs. For one, it can be liberating to work according to your schedule from the comfort of your home while avoiding hectic morning commutes and a loud, buzzy office. On the other hand, it keeps you stuck indoors, at home, with the same surroundings day and night. Interior designers are increasingly tasked with creating visionary residential office spaces, we’ve compiled a list of essential home office decorating ideas to help you create personalized spaces to guide your concentration toward work while leaving room for inspiration.
When beautiful design and practicality meet in interior design, stimulating home offices are born where every element reflects you and your style throughout your home. With studies and polls showing that roughly 43% of Americans spent at least some time working remotely from home last year, decorating the space you delegate for working at home should be considered an essential element in growing your business, increasing productivity and finding motivation. While it’s not about pretending you’re in an office, regardless of what type of work you do, a room dedicated to a home office can easily become a polished, sophisticated space for work and meetings.
Bring In What You Love
Your home office design should make you feel cozy and at peace as soon as you walk in. Work to create a stylish office that mirrors the design aesthetic throughout your home to spotlight your personality. Just like your sartorial style, a well-decorated and functional home office isn’t born overnight.
Organization Is Key
Like any workspace big or small, organization is a vital foundation for maintaining a smart working environment as it can save you time and create maintainable order.
In a small space, we suggest adding shelving above your desk or behind to make the best use of the area while storing paperwork and daily essentials. This remains one of the most popular home office decorating ideas to take advantage of for good reason. Keeping everything in its place will keep you focused and ready for the day ahead.
Create A Theme
Avoid one of the major pitfalls of office design by choosing a definitive design direction. Steer clear of the random elements often found in office environs as they’ll strip you of your motivation and leave you working out of a home office that is dull and drab.
Essentially, everything that goes into your office not only needs to have a sense of purpose but a sense of style as well.
Maintain A Core Color Palette
Just like any room in your home, sticking with a color palette adds a sense of balance and continuity. This can be both stimulating and reassuring when incorporated throughout your office. While we encourage using strong, uplighting hints of color, we suggest skipping out on the flashy, aggressive tones
Make It Personal, Add Character
Lucky for you, you’re not confined to corporate directives. Unlike working in a cold communal office, you’re free to add just about anything to your home office – as long as it’s not distracting. One of our go-to home office decorating ideas is to bring in your sense of self to make the space comfortable and customized to your lifestyle.
And when you find yourself pacing about, stressed out over that upcoming deadline or fretting over an assignment gone wrong, personal mementos and family photos can serve as calming devices to help you find a moment of relief and take a step back from that panic-inducing crisis.
Invest In A Proper Chair
Skip future back pain issues and treat your desk chair as a vital, splurge-worthy expense.
As most of us sit in a chair for long stretches during the day, your chair should be both ergonomic and stylish and should be the right height and size for your desk.Look for a chair that reflects your design aesthetic without dismissing comfort.
Think Past Function
Fill your workspace with what you may not immediately consider ‘office-appropriate’ and shy away from typically bland, charmless office furnishings. A substantial, unusually shaped or scaled desk can give the room an air of authority.
Maybe it’s an old dining table or a hand-me-down work table. Be resourceful, repurpose pieces you’ve loved in other rooms in your home in the past and incorporate them where you work for a cozy atmosphere.
Look For Visual Interest
Consider what’s in your home office, and everything in front of (or behind) your view while you work. Think about what you find visually stimulating and inspiring and consider ways to incorporate that feel when decorating your workspace.
Look for home office decorating ideas to keep it interesting, while keeping in mind that non-decor spots give the eye a break when you’re deep in thought and need things to be distraction free.
Rearrange Pieces
Break the monotony. Since you are most likely working alone, keep the space invigorating to you. Place furniture and objects in a way that what you see in front of you is stimulating and easy on the eye.
To keep things fresh, spend a few hours changing things up every so often for an easy, room rejuvenation.
Keep Clutter Out Of Sight
If there’s an eyesore in the mix, conceal what you can to cleverly keep it out of sight. Use bins and easy to store containers to hide unappealing office supplies that you don’t use throughout the day.
This way you can hide unnecessary wires and cords, and miscellaneous tech gadgets when there’s really no reason for them to be out.
Work In Color
Inspiration comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. From allover color to accent walls to vivid add-ons, energize your home office space with a dose of color to add personality to what may have initially been a neutral, lifeless space.
Incorporate Art
When you think of the art you find in a typical workspace and home office decorating ideas, well, they’re usually simply too generic. Art doesn’t always need to be provocative or over the top. Look to add hints of dynamic color and print with an easy on the eye appeal for a soothing distraction as your eye wanders.
Add Decorative Objects
Like every room in your home, adding fun, appealing decorative objects from vases to figurines is a simple way to bring a room to life while eliminating the boring, monotonous feel of a typical office space. And since the space should be tailored to your needs, have fun when sourcing pieces that will make the room pop – go big, be bold.
In turn, paying attention to every little detail is certain to make the room not only expressive but cozy and inviting as well.
Create Vignettes
Again, when thinking about home office decorating ideas, your personality and things you like and have collected will help you bring everything together. Bring in both cherished and unexpected elements that evoke a sense of emotion that you can easily move about while appreciating their personal history to you.
Think easy mood elevating keepsakes, small family heirlooms and personal collections filled with character that highlight your hobbies and passions. Personalize your home office space accordingly – as long as you maintain a laid-back atmosphere.
Display The Books You Use
Use attractive work-related books to your advantage as artful accents throughout the space when you come across them. When shelving or placing them on tabletops, the key is to keep them color coordinated for consistency and arrange them both horizontally & vertically for visual breaks.
And if your collection doesn’t yield the prettiest of options, go old-school and enhance unappealing but vital books by covering them with decorative paper for an interesting and affordable hit of color and texture throughout your home office. For more interest, unusual bookends will punctuate your collection while becoming a talking point.
Use Colored Files + Boxes
Manila folders no more. From Target to Muji, file holders and boxes in brilliant hues and expressive prints are an inexpensive way to add personality and interest to your space.
Use Catchall Trays
From loose change to a mix of various small office supplies, decorative holdall trays are small enough to quickly stow away while creating a tidy, well-organized workspace, and come at a variety of prices.
Keep Objects Consistent
When it comes to home office decorating ideas when displaying figurines and design objects, stick to a rule of at least three similar pieces to create a harmonious vibe as one small item will look lost. Even in varying sizes, a set of three coordinated objects will look more substantial, less random.
