Refurbishing the home office: advantages and practical solutions

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Refurbishing the home office: advantages and practical solutions

Not everyone can enjoy the flexibility to move their office home, but if you count yourself among the lucky ones, you have the freedom to create an appropriate space for your personality to increase the productivity. Moreover, the environment in which you work has a huge impact on both the morale and mood, so assembling an office can help you to keep your positivism throughout the week. Here are some ideas for refurbishing a home office:

What are the advantages of refurbishing a home office?

People who are working from home enjoy some benefits. A study by Microsoft called “Work without Walls” based on a series of online interviews has identified some important benefits for homeworkers:

A good balance between personal and professional life – 60%

Exemption from gasoline money – 55%

Traffic avoidance – 47%

Increased productivity – 45%

Less distracting things – 44%

Remove the lost time on the road – 44%

Peaceful atmosphere – 43%

Elimination of stress – 38%

The reasons are quite convincing to push you to investigate what options you have for working from home. If you work as a freelancer, you need space for personal projects, you have the freedom to work from home some days, or you simply have a remote post, so you will need to refurbish a home office.

How do you choose where you place your home office?

To choose where to install your new office, the first step is to make a list of all the things you will need: laptop, additional monitors, important documents, printer, phone, etc. This will give you a better insight into the actual space that you need, and then you can choose a dedicated space where you will have to place everything you need. Ideally it would be to choose a quieter and secluded area of ​​your home where you can enjoy the intimacy. For example, if you have children, you may need a separate room where you can get away for peace.

Refurbishing your office in a dedicated room

Refurbishing your office room can be a challenge for many people, but all you have to do is keep in mind a few essential things. When you choose the room that will serve as your office, the first thing you have in mind is the space for all your needs. For example, an architect or illustrator may need a large table and more storage space for his sketches, but also a natural light source as good as possible. So he will need a very bright and bigger room.

On the other hand, a person who only needs a laptop to carry on, will need a much smaller space. If you live in a large house, installing an office in the attic could be an optimal solution, this being more secluded from the rest of the room, giving you more privacy. However, if your job involves many customer meetings, you will need a room as close as possible to the entrance door.

A good decision would be to make the office look as different as possible from the rest of the rooms to better define the professional space from the personal space. For this, choose for furnishing and decorating the office with other colors or in a different style to the rest of the house.

Refurbish the office in a classic style

The classic style never gets demoted. To arrange your office in this style, search for solid wood elements, preferably dark, and well-defined geometric shapes. Also, a huge library that occupies an entire wall or a marble fireplace fits ideally into such a decor. In one corner you can place a comfortable leather or velvet chair and a lamp to turn it into a reading space. Look for brown, golden, or pale colors like beige or cream. This kind of decoration fits very well into a very generous space.

Refurbish the office in a modern style

The modern style is characterized by angles and straight lines, furniture as functional as possible, with smooth and lacquered surfaces, without much decorative details. Practically, the modern style of refurbishing an office is a minimalist one, easy to adapt to small spaces, but also suitable to larger rooms. You can choose colors that are pale, very white, and the walls can be a colored spot and style for the whole ensemble. A painted wall in a darker color, for example, blue or gray oil, can be a very pleasant and soothing effect.

As an alternative, the metallic materials and industrial-style elements fit very well within this decor and the brick or stone walls are very well suited to such decoration.

Refurbishing the office in a Feng Shui style

A Feng Shui office helps you to get more inspiration, creativity and productivity, eliminating the negative and uncomfortable elements around the workspace. You can have a harmonious space with some feng shui principles for office refurbishing:

Make order and organize: Create a system so that each item you need has its own place at your fingertips. Use the cupboards and storage boxes, allocated by product category. Thus, it will be very easy to find any object or document you need without having disorder around you.

Make sure you place your office in the right place: A key element of a Feng shui refurbishment is the office position. The table must always be in a position of power, more precisely the farthest corner from the door. If you stay too close to the door, you have more chances to distract you with routine things in the house. Feng-shui-and-beyond.com shows you some suitable options to place your office.

Accessorize with paintings and images: In a feng shui office it is important to surround yourself with office decorations and paintings that inspire and relax you. Add flowers and hang up paintings with mottoes and images that symbolize what you want to do. Any element you choose should inspire you prosperity, abundance and success.

Create balance and harmony: The Feng Shui rules are based on the balance and harmony. These are given back either by the energy of yin and yang, the two forces of nature that reflect duality of things, or by elements of feng shui, namely the five elements that represent the nature: the wood, ground, metal, fire and water, which must be in a perfect harmony. For example, if you have a very bright office (the fire element) decorated with electronics (laptop, phones, printer), iron cupboards and a table with metal legs (all of this represent the metal), you will need to harmonize the space by introducing the other elements: Accessories in the colors of the ground, wood materials, some plants or even an aquarium.

Use feng shui colors: pale yellow, sandy color, pale orange, bluish or pale green are excellent choices. Adding white helps increase the clarity and concentration. Shades of the ground create a stable environment, although it does not stimulate the intellect.

Surround yourself with stress relieving objects: the irascibility and stress can be kept under control. The round corner furniture, replacing strong and hard light with a warm light, relaxing melodies and scented candles will create a pleasant, stress-free work environment.

How do you choose the lighting sources for your home office?

Each corner of the room has a different function: maybe your office includes a corner for reading, or you can have a living room with a desk and have a place to watch TV. Consequently, the light sources in the room must be different and fit into each function. Take into account the natural light trajectory to determine how intense the light is, and then choose a combination of lighting sources to suit the ambient, practical and decorative accents. Use spotlights or chandeliers for the general light in the room, an office lamp that protects your eyes while you work or decorative lamps with warm light. Choose the light sources that best fit with your style and personality.

Refurbishing a work corner

If you do not have a free room in your home where you can arrange your home office, it does not mean you can not enjoy a relaxing workspace. You can delineate a corner of work to implement all the tips and ideas of refurbishing the office at home. It is important to find the right corner.

Where is it recommended to place the office and where not?

It is advisable that the office space is best delineated from the rest of the house, because you will have much greater productivity if you can delimit the space for work from the small entertainment of the personal relaxation space.

The balcony: refurbishing your office in a closed balcony could be an ideal solution, whether it is integrated into the living room or separately. As a rule, the balcony is a room where you can enjoy the natural light in abundance, which increases your productivity.

The living room: Usually, as the largest room of your house, it is not very difficult to refurbish a living room with a desk. You can arrange your office next to a window for a better light, integrate it into a custom-made library, or place it next to or behind the sofas that will delimit the space.

The bedroom: Although many people choose to fit the bedroom with a desk, this is not necessarily the best choice. The bedroom should be a space reserved for rest. The bed can distract you every time you try to focus, tempting yourself to a nap, which will significantly slow the rhythm of work. However, if you are determined to refurbish the bedroom with desk, choose a withdrawn and well-defined corner, preferably with your back to the bed.

How you integrate the work space with your existing furniture

Your office furniture can retain the same design and respect the theme already provided by the rest of the room, but usually the simple wooden furniture can adapt to any still. You can search in such a range of office furniture items that fit to your personality and needs.

Practical tip: Opt for furniture as simple as possible in neutral colors, which can be easily integrated anywhere. Then use decorative accessories such as picture frames, pillows and materials that respect the decorative style of the room to create a continuity between the office and the rest of the room.

How to get rid of unnecessary things

For an efficient workspace, the first step is not to gather the unnecessary things in your workspace. For example, the old magazines that you have not seen for months or the full agendas that no longer contain topical information would not be in your office. Drop everything that is of no use to you.

Then do not forget to keep on the desk just the right one. Do not leave on the desk the piles of paper to make you uncomfortable or your cell phone to distract you. That is why you need a very well organized organization system.

How do you best organize the space?

A good organization will ease your work significantly and bring order and clarity into the day-to-day procedures. There are a few steps that will help you efficient your style of work:

Use the space-fitting furniture: If your space is small, opt for multifunctional furniture. For example, a table that can be incorporated in the library or stools where you can store certain things can be helpful. Another option would be instead of a traditional table to opt for a desk supported on shelves for storage instead of wooden or iron legs. Also, instead of a bookcase, use wall shelves that are not as bulky.

Make sure you have everything at your fingertips: Any interruption slows down your rhythm, so when it comes to the things you need in everyday projects, make sure that they are always at your fingertips. For example, some documents or special tools for drawing should be at two or three seconds away without wasting time searching for them.

Organize everything by categories: Arranges everything by categories and uses labels or colors for differentiation. For example, if you have your own business, the documents related to company registration can be placed in the document drawer and marked with a different color than the suppliers’ contracts.