Decorating the interior of your office might seem like a trivial matter that requires little to no attention. However, you and your workers are going to spend hours inside it and you need to feel comfortable if nothing else. Even if you work in a home office, you have at least introduced a more comfortable chair to arrange the space to your taste. In fact, office décor can have a major influence on happiness, health, and last but not least, the productivity of everyone working there.
These are all reasons why interior design is important but it probably costs a lot of green bills, doesn’t it? Well, there are several hacks that you can apply that will create the perfect décor without taking away too much time and money. Here the 7 best kept interior decorating secrets that will forever change the look of your office and turn it into a truly productive surrounding.
Decluttering the office
Clutter can be a real nuisance back at home, but it’s problematic at work too. Not only does it make getting things done a lot harder but it can cause creative chaos and totally disrupt the “flow” of your employees. This is especially detrimental for enterprises which rely on creativity for success, such as IT startups or marketing agencies. By decluttering the office, you are in fact, decluttering the minds of your employees and they become ready to come up with new ideas.
Clutter is hard to combat because it has one particularly nasty trait: it always returns. You can organize as much cleaning sprees as you like but clutter always seems to bounce back. This is because office space is really human space, and we humans are not robots to perform actions automatically. However, discipline can go to your advantage, so you can explain to the employees the importance of decluttering. Once they understand its importance, there will no longer be empty plastic cups on the water cooler and papers lying all over the floor.
Adopting minimalism
Another design hack that is closely related to decluttering is the introduction of office minimalism. This design style is all about necessity, so every item that does not belong in the office shouldn’t be there. For example, if you have industrial air-conditioning, you are not going to need additional high power fans. They take up space and cost you money, so do away with them. Walk through the office and try to detect items and features that are a surplus and remove them from the office. You want to create an environment where only work essentials and employees’ personal belonging have a place. Don’t be tempted to bring stuff from home and store it at the office. This goes for your workers too, so a bicycle does not belong in the office but outside to a bike rack.
Colors matter
It has been scientifically proven that colors influence the way our mind functions. It is not the same if your office walls were pink or dark blue, as both colors have special feelings associated with them. For instance, green is the color of relaxation, yellow of inspiration, and shades of blue boost productivity. You can choose whichever palette you and your employees approve of but just make sure that the hues are not tacky and that they are mellow. There is no room for orange or translucent yellow in the office. Better go for neutral shades of blue, grey, that will not distract the workers. Of course, if individual employees want to color-customize their work area, let them do so. It is their own cubicle so they can relax their eyes on whatever color they wish to.
The flooring
We have seen that the color of the walls matters but what about the floors? Well, they have an ambient value but they are more important for a different reason. Namely, safety is an important issue in every office and it would be excellent if office design could address it. Bare floors and huge carpets are not the ideal solutions because they provide little safety. What your office really needs are rubber mats. These prevent slipping and in some cases, they can have an anti-fatigue effect. You can even install personalised rubber matting so that each worker can choose the design for his own mat. They are usually placed in front of offices or next to machinery that requires an operator. In essence, whichever task includes a lot of standing or sitting in one place, there should be a mat in that area of the office.
A message board for a look into the future
Your office probably has at least one cork message board that has numerous charts and post-it notes attached to it. This is all nice but why limit the information put up on the board only to present time? You can create a special notice board where you would hang pictures of future projects, new ideas and visions your employees have. Not only will such a board act as a great motivator but you will always have your very own window into the future of the enterprise.
Light(en) up
Since you are more than often forced to rent office space, you have a little saying in whether the room will have enough windows, i.e. natural light. This might not seem that much important, but having enough light in the room can even influence productivity. Depression does not belong inside the office and plenty of light is essential when it comes to influencing the mood of your employees in a positive way. If you have the possibility, always go for higher floors with a lot of large windows and skylights. If there is enough light in the rooms, there will be less grumpy workers in the office.
Fresh air
Another decorating secret is related to the quality in the air inside the office. Just as with light, there should be plenty of fresh air inside, so an excellent ventilation system is a must. Also, you have to have balconies and other spaces designated for smokers as smoking inside should be out of the question! The air can start to reek from a ventilation system that is dirty, so you can employ air fresheners until the maintenance sorts out the problem.
As you have seen from these 7 not that often mentions tips on how to decorate your office, creating an ideal working space is not that hard. You needn’t invest a lot of money since all you need is goodwill and attention to detail.