Welcome to our daily dose of design advice, where we take your questions to our talented team of designers. Need help organizing? Creating a gallery wall? How about making a small space functional? We have you covered on all avenues. Check back daily for fresh advice from our expert team.
Dear Spacejoy,
Working from home over the last few months has been tough. I have been bouncing around from the dining table, the living room and even my bedroom. In the attempt of finding a comfortable place to work, I have struggled with being productive and staying organized. I’ve finally cleared out the guest bedroom to turn into a proper home office. Can you share tips on how to set up an office that is organized and will help me be productive?
Desperately need to be Marie Kondo,
Peggy
Dear Peggy
We completely understand the predictament that you are in! Working from home is a challenge due to all of the distractions your home provides. Creating an organized office can be broken down to a few simple tips like cleaning up the work station, create multiple areas for productivity and decorating wisely.
1. Clean Up the Work Station
A clean work station is essential to an organized space. Reducing clutter on the desk will prevent you from getting distracted. We suggest saving the decor for vertical spaces. For example, the shelves in the above work space are great for removing decorate items from the desk. You can use vertical space to display your favorite art, family photos or other decorative items like vases, plants and more.
2. Create Multiple Areas for Productivity
Our next step shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Many office spaces, whether corporate or home offices, create multiple areas for productivity. Why? Sometimes a change of scenery is all you need to re-focus your efforts. Creating these secondary or purposeful spaces is easy. Take the photo below. We’ve added in a chair and pouf that can be used to either complete out those easy-to-do tasks or take a quick break from the computer for other tasks. We’ve also included a work station for printing and storing items, which will help with adding function for each zone of the office.
3. Decorate Wisely
In spaces that are meant for productivity, decorating choices should be made carefully. Consider these choices with the mindset, what joy will this bring me or how will this help me with accomplishing my goals? Take our example room as an example. For this space, the decorative accents are green plants, whiteboards and pinboards. Research shows that adding in greenery to a workspace increases both happiness and productivity, making them a smart choice for work spaces. As for the pinboards and whiteboards? Those provide creative areas for you to update your tasks and plan out tasks.
We hope these three tips offered you a great starting point for your office. If you have more questions about how to optimize your productive work space, work directly with our design experts! Our team of expert designers can help you optimize your space for whatever tasks you may encounter in your day.
We’ve also selected additional design inspiration below. Notice how clean workspaces, multiple areas of producitivity and smart decorative choices run throughout each of these designs.
