Have you made the switch to working from home? Following the stay-at-home orders imposed on 1.5 billion people after the outbreak of COVID-19, many people have made this transition, but at the cost of their productivity. A major obstacle is creating the right environment to ensure you are focused and relaxed.
In addition, elements in a home office like colors, plants, noise and lighting all have a significant impact on one’s concentration, and can also help you enjoy your work. After all, one of the important benefits of working from home is the freedom you have to decorate according to your personal tastes. This is an opportunity to customize your workspace to unleash creativity and your hidden talents.
With the above guiding principles in mind, here are some things must be taken into consideration when designing an ideal work from home space. We’ve rounded up some of the top tips below.
Make yourself at home. Design your workspace to naturally extend the overall interior design in your house or apartment, and it should blend seamlessly. Incorporate the same design elements you love in your home, and overall plan to decorate with the same themes. For example, if you love plants in your home, then include a lot of green in your work space. If natural wood tones are your vibe, then select the same material for your office desk and chair. Don’t limit yourself just because this is your workspace. You will be much more productive in an environment that brings you joy, so put some extra care into creating a work space that feels like you’re at home.
Let there be light. Natural light has been proven to improve productivity, and having sufficient sunlight in an office space will elevate mood and benefit overall health, so it’s extremely important to create ample opportunities for natural light to filter into your home office environment. Ensure you have sufficient light to work well, but try to avoid stark lighting like fluorescents, and instead supplement natural light with incandescent bulbs that are softer and integrate well with natural light. We spend most of our days staring at our screens, so the aim is to balance that with natural light as much as possible.
Add a dash of color. You can get a boost of inspiration whenever you need it by ensuring you have bright colors added to your home office décor. Strong colors with refined compositions help improve focus and concentration, while abstract art and neutral palettes like green and beige help with tasks that require a calm mind. Blue is soothing, inspires focus and stimulates productivity, but be sure to break it up with some brighter colors, like orange, to create a balance. Put a little time into decorating your space with vibrant colors—on your desk, on the walls, basically anywhere your gaze falls. Make sure you have a spirited, lively environment to keep your creative juices flowing, and ensure that your productivity stays high.
Stay organized. Keep your home office space fully-stocked with great organization solutions. The sight of extraneous items strewn about an office can add to stress. Instead, add shelves or install cabinets against the walls. Rather than your typical office storage bins, keep baskets, boxes and containers on your desk and fill them with your essential stationery and work items, so you have what you need within easy reach. Clear, acrylic boxes with lids are ideal for compartmentalizing your go-to office accessories, and you can easily stack them on top of each other to save space and still see what is inside, so items can be easily located again.
Hide the cables. Electrical cords and computer cables are essential, of course, but try to make them as unobtrusive as possible. Leverage Bluetooth and other wireless technologies to cut down on the number of cables you require to work. Choose furniture and built-ins that make computer monitors and TVs fit seamlessly into a cabinet or the wall, and find furniture that will hold the printer, which is often the bulkiest piece of equipment. Mount a power strip on to the back of your desk or underneath, and use cable ties to wrangle any cords that get plugged into that power strip and run them along the back of the furniture where they’re out of sight. You will be astonished how much cleaner and brighter your home office will look once the cables and cords are gone.
Conclusion
The most important thing is to make your home office reflect the way you like to work. If you do your best work behind a desk, then center your decorating around a desk and chair. If you prefer to lounge on laptop, pick out comfortable couches or chairs to start. The goal is to create a space that will make you happy, and always inspire you to work.
Finally, decide whether your workspace will be exclusively for work, or serve a dual function in your home. For example, some prefer to have a work from home space where they can close the door and leave it behind at the end of the day. While others, prefer the space to also serve as a library, TV room, or sitting room. Either way, it can work and it is entirely up to you. But make a decision, and stick to it—that way your home office will be everything you want it to be, even when you’re not working.
Author Bio
Ray Ko has been creating effective visual merchandising and interior design strategies for retailers for more than 20 years. Today, he is the senior ecommerce manager for shopPOPdisplays, a leading designer and manufacturer of stock and custom retail displays that helps brick-and-mortar and ecommerce stores of all sizes, across all industries, showcase their products to drive sales.
