When you spend so much time working from home, it’s important that your home office’s decor speaks to you. You want to walk into your office feeling inspired, calm, and productive. If you’re looking for home office decor ideas, you’ve come to the right place.
Your home office should have a different look and feel than the rest of your home. Since you aren’t getting in the car and heading to a unique workspace, you need to make it different enough to trick your mind into entering a work mindset. If you design your office correctly, walking in will help you reset and focus on the work ahead of you.
Define Your Work Style
It would be strange if you drove to your new job, walked into the office, and realized it was decorated exactly like your house. If it was, you’d probably have difficulty differentiating the spaces, and you might have difficulty feeling productive, and you might even forget you’re at work.
This is why you need to use a different color scheme and design concept when decorating and organizing your home office.
The concept you develop should still be “you;” it’s just a different version of you. It’s “work you” not “personal life you.” While you might be a boho-chic type of person who loves a cozy home, you might be more of a minimalist, utilitarian type of employee who loves ergonomics and productivity. Find out what “work you” likes and what environment she’d best function in.
Is work you:
- Traditional? This design blends a bunch of old-school European styles. It emphasizes elegance, antiquity, luxurious fabrics, and a neutral color palette.
- Modern? This style is clean, simple, and stark. It supports the elegance of simplicity, caters to a white palette with little variation in neutral tones, and emphasizes absence and open space.
- Eclectic? If your work style is playful and bold, an eclectic space might be the perfect fit for you. There’s no true definition of an eclectic space; just use contrasting elements and pick vivid colors.
- Shabby-chic? If you’re a DIYer, then this style might be for you. Upcycling is a big part of shabby-chic culture. This could include revamping vintage items or distressing a piece of furniture you saw discarded on the side of the road.
- Farmhouse? A farmhouse look is the combination of rustic and shabby-chic tied together with a clean, white backdrop. It has notions of the rustic style, like the use of wood, and it has the DIY elements of shabby-chic. It’s essentially a romanticized vision of what a farmhouse would look like without animals to make it messy.
- Bohemian? This space is comfortable, cozy, and uses bright, rich colors in their designs. To the untrained eye, it could almost look messy, but the focus is on a carefree spirit and worldly view.
- Industrial? An industrial style focuses on exposed brickwork, utilitarian objects, and a raw, unfinished feel. Even if you don’t live in an apartment complex that was converted from a warehouse, you can still get an industrial feel by introducing antique light fixtures and wood or metal surfaces to your home office furniture.
Use these room ideas as a starting point to create something unique to you. Have your home office designed with you in mind.
Simple Tricks That Make a Difference
Not everyone has a budget to go out and completely remodel their home office. You also don’t need to be a master of interior design to make your home office space feel like it matches your work aesthetic.
Here are some tips to brighten up your space, even if you don’t live in a designer’s home.
- Orient the focus of the room toward natural light. People tend to thrive and focus when they have access to natural light. If you have a window in your office, put your desk in front of it so you can look outside and be bathed in natural light while you work.
- Thrift your home office decor. Art doesn’t have to be expensive to be beautiful. Check out your local thrift store or Facebook Marketplace to find someone’s discarded art. You’ll be giving new life to the piece and keeping stuff out of the landfill! You can even find good furniture for cheap on Marketplace and LetGo.
- Detox the room by removing unnecessary items. Don’t use your office as a storage unit. If you’re trying to work and keep looking around at clutter, it’s going to take you out of your focused state. Remove everything that isn’t necessary to your work to freshen up the space.
- Use the concept of gallery walls to make your wall decor pop. If you find some matching art pieces that really speak to you, format them into a gallery wall. You can go on Etsy and find digital download art pieces that you can print from home. Use thrifted frames to make them pop! This is an extremely affordable method to really personalize a wall so it speaks to you.
Home Office Decor Ideas for a Multifunctional Space
If your home office is just the dining room or living room and a laptop, it’s a bit more difficult to make your office an immersive, unique space. However, there are some ways to transition this area into a workspace during the day.
Even if you don’t have an entire room for your office, try to create an office nook in the multipurpose room. If you have a dedicated desk reserved only for work, then you can enter the correct headspace while remaining in an open room. If you have space, get a small desk with plenty of drawers for all your needed supplies. The goal is to stay in the space as much as possible; if you have to get up to find a stapler, you’re met with all the undone house chores and other distractions of the home and you lose your sense of flow and focus. Try to keep the desk as stocked as possible. Have a desk chair that you use only during work hours.
Face the desk towards a wall or a window. If you’re facing the room, you’re more likely to get distracted and stay in a home-based state of mind. Decorate the wall with different fun or motivational prints to keep you focused and keyed into your productive state. If you’re a plant mom, add a small succulent or flower to your desk. You can even put a hanging plant above your desk.
If there isn’t room for a desk, train yourself to think of one specific spot as a designated workspace. Get an office chair and only use it when you’re in work mode. Sit in the same spot every day and think of that area as your desk. Before you sit down to work, make sure you have everything you need for the day spread out across the table. Minimize the amount you have to get up and search for something, but take periodic breaks to stand up and stretch. Have a specific glass for water or mug for coffee that you only use when you’re working. These small gestures help cue to your mind that it needs to enter work mode.
Make Your Home Decor Work for You
At the end of the day, it isn’t about having a home office that’s postable or Instagram-worthy. What matters is that your office feels comfortable to you and helps put you in a headspace where you’re ready to work at your fullest potential.
Some creatives work better in a chaotic space. Some people enjoy a neat, simple space where everything has its place. Your home office decor ideas don’t have to be based on the latest trend; they just have to work for you.
Published in Dwell, Featured Articles
Author, Artist, Photographer.
Sarah Margaret is an artist who expresses her love for feminism, equality, and justice through a variety of mediums: photography, filmmaking, poetry, illustration, song, acting, and of course, writing.
She owns Still Poetry Photography, a company that showcases her passion for capturing poetic moments in time. Instead of poetry in motion, she captures visual poetry in fractions of a second, making cherished keepsakes of unforgettable moments.
She is the artist behind the Still Poetry Etsy shop, which houses her illustrations and bespoke, handmade items. She is the author of intricacies are just cracks in the wall, a narrative poetry anthology that follows a young woman discovering herself as she emerges from an abusive relationship.
