Decorating your office or business can seem like a daunting task.
But selecting your office decor can be an exciting and invigorating endeavor
that can help you better enjoy your surroundings and offer a positive
environment for your customers and office visitors.
We have put together a number of suggestions for decorating your
office spaces. Suggestions range from decorating your home office to
adding practical decorations to the visitor bathroom.
The links below will provide you with ideas for specific areas of your
office or business. Below these links you can find some general ideas
and suggestions for decorating any business or office space.
General Office Decorating Guidelines
Sometimes the hardest part of any design project is simply
getting started.
You can spend days, weeks, and years trying to come up with
viable ideas and still have little you feel satisfies your
needs and interests. We've provided some general
approaches that you might employ to help reduce your
frustration and provide you with a sound starting point for
your office design project. You may be able to use
several of these suggestions to help develop a cohesive
approach to your office design.
Define a Theme for Your Office
One approach to start your design project is to define an
overall theme for your office. If you have a
theme then selecting furnishings, art, and wall colors can
feel more intuitive, thereby simplifying many of your
choices. The number of potential themes is, both
fortunately and unfortunately, endless. Nonetheless, there
are many general themes you might consider that can help
narrow in on the perfect office decorating concept.
Here are a few themes you might consider to get the process
rolling.
Nature - the natural hues and iconic images
available in nature can provide a good overarching theme
for your office space. You might focus your theme around
bodies of water, brilliant flowers, soaring mountains, colorful deserts,
natural forests, or majestic wildlife. While you
may not necessarily have pictures of these items in your
office, you might find color palettes and subtle design
elements that are inspired by nature's bounty.
Work Related - Naturally, defining elements of
your office decor that draw from the nature of your work
or business can aid you in your design process.
You could select decorative items, posters, or artwork
related to your business. You could select
furnishings that have a strong correlation with your
office endeavors. You might also find antique
tools or art depicting older work methods or concepts
that can serve as a conversation starter or focal point
in your environment.
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Outside Activities - if you are deeply interested in
a particular past time, recreational activity, or hobby
then you may be able to find an overriding theme within
this activity. For example, if you are interested
in sailing, then a nautical theme may be a natural
design solution. If you are passionate about
plants, then a gardening theme could be a guiding design
solution. Sports, travel, hobbies, and
movies can all serve as a basis for developing a general
theme for your office decor.
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Identify a General Style
Another approach to starting your design is to define a
general style for your office space. You might
consider a rustic look or an ultra modern sleek design for
your office. Additional styles to consider might
include country, urban, high tech, or even something like a
retro-50's look. Consider spending some time looking
at the decor for the various businesses you visit to make a
mental note of the general styles they use. You can
then decide if that general style would be a good fit for
your office facilities.
Define Textures
One element that can help pull a design idea together is
texture. By that I don't necessarily mean what cloth
is selected, but rather the overall texture of most surfaces
in your design space. Possible textures might include
rough hewn wood, finely finished wood, leather, polished
stone, a rich cloth weave, clear or mirrored glass, or
highly polished metal surfaces. Using a texture as a
consistent design element can provide a cohesive look and
feel to your office space and provide you with an intrinsic
tool to use when selecting elements for your office decor.
Select a Color Palette
Picking a color palette first can be a good way to approach
your design problem. Once a color palette has been
defined then other elements within the office decor can more
easily be selected. A bright and vivid color scheme
might lead you to select more sleek and contemporary
furnishings, while a pastel color palette might lead to you
select furnishings that are more refined and elegant.
A palette based on earth tones could cause you to tend more
toward wood decor, though many other options might fit well
with this color palette as well. Choosing your color
palette first can help bring other elements of the office
decor into focus and provide you with a sound general plan
for decorating your office space.
Identify Your Lighting Needs
Light is a critical and often overlooked component of any
office decor. Light can not only provide adequate task
illumination, but it can also define the overall ambience
and mood of a space. You might, for example, decide
that you want ample direct and indirect light to offer an
upbeat and energetic feel to your office. You could
also decide that your daily tasks require more subdued
lighting. This could be the case if you work on
computer graphics or wish to offer old world charm and
character to your work area. Whatever your lighting
requirements, defining them early in your design process can
help when selecting other elements to decorate your office.
Your lighting needs might also define the types of lights
you install or the window coverings you select. If you
decide you need a bright and cheery space then you might
decide against selecting dark and ponderous window coverings
or furnishings that will absorb rather than reflect light.
On the other hand, if you require subdued lighting in your
office, then these might be the very window coverings and
furnishings you select.
Choose Your Flooring
Sometimes you solve a problem by starting at the top and
working your way down. At other times, you can do the
opposite. By selecting your flooring first you can
begin a cascade of other design choices that bring your
design processes to a successful conclusion. Here are
some flooring selections that might offer you a starting
point for your overall office decor definitions.
Carpeting - You might select carpeting if you
want to offer a warm feel to your office space or if you
want to limit the amount of noise echoing in and from
your office. Selecting a smooth and tightly woven
carpet could suggest sleek and elegant furnishings,
while selecting a tufted or woven carpet could suggested
a more rustic feel. The specific carpet you select
could readily help you define other design elements in
your office.
Tile or Stone - By selecting tile or stone
flooring you could be providing an open and energetic
environment. These materials readily transmit
sound and make a great choice if conversation is an
integral part of your office activities. Selecting
these flooring elements could then lead you to select
other stone elements in your office. It might also
suggest glass furnishings or wood elements as a
contrasting decor element. Stone could also lead
you to select a piece of sculpture as a critical
decorative element in your office.
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Wood - Flooring consisting of wood or wood-composites
provide some of the sound transmission attributes of
stone, but also provide some of the visual warmth of
carpeting. Selecting wood flooring might lead you
to select wood for other design elements in the office.
It might also lead you to select glass or other
materials that are traditionally paired with wood as
part of a total design concept.
Identify Traffic Patterns
In some cases identifying how traffic must move in your
office can help define a general design strategy for your
space. If many people must move into and around your office
then your furnishings and art might include items that do
not take up much floor space or that are easily moved and
reconfigured. If you have frequent clients or visitors
to your office then you would probably elect to have a
conference table or perhaps orient your desks so that you
can face your visitors while seated.
Define Emergency and Safety Requirements
Emergency and safety requirements are also commonly
overlooked concepts in office design. Consider how you
would escape your office in event of a fire or earthquake on
a dark winter evening. Will there be cumbersome
furnishings or fallen artwork you will need to dodge as you
try to escape? Would a particularly sturdy desk be a
good selection if you live in an earthquake prone area of
the country? How would you escape your office if the doorway
were blocked during an emergency? Where would you
place a fire extinguisher, flashlight, or other emergency
equipment? These are all questions that can lead you
to some general design principles you will use throughout
your decorating project. Even if these questions do
not lead to any specific design alternatives, they are still
excellent questions to periodically review.
Define the Primary Use for Your Space
The most obvious input when deciding how to decorate your
office is the primary purpose and use of your office space.
While this is inherently obvious, it is not always the
primary factor people use when deciding how to decorate
their office, conference room, hallway, or or other area.
But clearly, this should have tremendous impact on your
decor selections. Ignoring your need for ample file
storage in favor of a piece of art or beverage machine will
eventually cause your office to appear cluttered and may
ultimately make it unworkable. Forgetting that 60% of
your day is spent talking to clients may lead you to turn
your desk to face a wall or window instead of your visitors.
Starting your design process by clearly and completely
defining your office usage patterns will provide tremendous
insight in the selection of furnishings, colors, art, and
other decor elements in your office.
The Final Analysis
A successful design process usually involves most if not all of the design
concepts listed above. But by starting with one or two of these elements
you can readily identify a good deal of your office design requirements.
By then blending in the other design concepts you should be able to derive a
sound basis for decor selections in your business, office, home office,
conference room or cubicle.