Need ideas for your workspace at home? It helps to see how others space plan and choose paint colors so we’re peeking at inspiring offices at home. Whether you are starting from scratch or hoping to improve your current configuration, find smart tips ahead.
Workspace Ideas: Paint Colors & Design
Planning & Color Stories for Home Offices
1. What does your workspace need?
Prior to gathering a single aesthetic idea, take time to identify your needs. Don’t get distracted just yet about a specific “look.” Instead, assess how the workspace must function. Think about essentials. Finishing touches will follow.
For example, I need all work supplies well-organized according to my personal organizational style. My supplies are contained in open bins not file cabinets. While out of sight in the photo below, supplies are in baskets on the lower shelf of a nearby console.
What Colors Will Make Sense in Your Workspace?
I can’t focus clearly in spaces with energetic saturated color. Subdued, subtle, neutrals are just the ticket. This office/dressing room/closet where I occasionally work is painted SW Agreeable Gray, which can be sampled easily with Samplize (link below this image).
Color is personal. My ideal color palette may be all wrong for you. All the greige I love may lull you…and lulling is not always the mode you’re after to get energized for work!).
Self-awareness will help you choose appropriate color stories. If this neutral below feels too sedate yet you still want a calm, low contrast look:
Consider a bolder neutral such as Pantone’s 2025 color of the year which may provide a rich answer to your desire for comfort:
2. Space Requirements
How much space will you require? Have tons of documents or tools to spread out? Perhaps the spaciousness of your dining room table makese sense. Relying on a single laptop only? A small bedside desk may do the trick.
Where will you feel most productive? How important is quiet focus? Will you meet with clients or offer services from the workspace? Spare bedrooms, closets, quiet corners, stair landings, and even outbuildings are possibilities. Underutilized space in halls, nooks, foyers, or pantries may also work.
Will there be adequate separation? It is truly a bonus if you are able to step away from the space and forget about work! Is the office area removed from noise, pets, and people?
3. Ideas to Carve Out Workspace at Home
Need privacy within the room? Sometimes a screen or bookcase provide the right bit of separation to define a zone for work.
Corner desks. Is there a corner to work in a living room, great room, or den? Sometimes a corner desk brings coziness to an otherwise dim corner.
What’s the best view for YOU? Arrange furniture so your view is not cluttered with distractions. What to do about a view of a blank wall? Keep reading.
Closet-office possibilities. Sometimes it makes sense to utilize closet space. (Can belongings within be stored in under-bed roll outs to make space for workspace?) Closet doors keep work out of sight when closed, and small closets offer vertical space for shelves, cabinets and supplies.
A power strip run from a nearby outlet may be adequate, and you can creatively personalize the nook (bring a hanging plant into the mix!).
Workspace Furniture
4. Home Office Furniture
Space-saving desk solutions. Innovative desk solutions include Murphy style, floating, and wall-mounted convertible desks. They can prevent a workspace from taking over the home’s square footage.
Even though this is a kids room, you’ll get the idea of how a wall-mounted desk conserves space:
If you live in a smaller home without a dining room, a new desk can double as the dining table.
Here’s a streamlined possibility to work as a multi-purpose surface:
Browse Desks That Will Feel Native to the Space. Rather than limit yourself to “office furniture” searches, look at pieces that won’t stand out from the balance of your furnishings. If you work from a small laptop, a smaller scale secretary or writing desk may function well next to a bed.
Modern and minimal styles like this industrial one keep the look airy and light:
Smart closet desk DIY. Need an affordable custom desk in a closet? An off the shelf laminate countertop from warehouse stores may be a smart solution. Wood supports on walls at either end within the closet can support such a countertop desk.
5. Lighting
Don’t underestimate smart natural and artificial lighting. If you have worked in a space with insufficient light, you know. Ugh. Best exposure? Southeast or easterly exposures. Also, be sure to test lighting for visual conferencing.
Task light matters. Adjustable lamp heads and and task lamps with arms to direct light where you need it make a huge difference. Look for desk lamps with bases to function as wireless charging stations for convenience (recently picked up a desk lamp with built-in charger at Homegoods for $12!).
Floor lamps are unsung heroes. Don’t forget about ambient light. For example, floor lamps can transform dark corners and create a pleasant mood with a comforting glow.
6. Cords & Organization
Corral that clutter. What helped me get a handle on home organization, including office stuff? A no-nonsense book to help me identify my organization style called The Clutter Connection (Mango, 2019) by Cassandra Aarssen. Is your issue maintaining order once you have spent a bunch of time getting organized? It may be you need this book to help you put in place the just right organization systems for your personality, not the organization book author’s.
Manage unruly cords. A cable management box with a power strip inside keeps cords and cables tidy.
7. Tech & Tools
Scan if you can. Unless hard copies are essential, consider scanning for digital copies. A wireless printer also keeps things visually calm.
Noise pollution. Resolve noise issues for improved concentration and professionalism. In addition to noise-canceling headphones, sound-deadening panels or carpet to absorb sound helps. Upgrade a hollow-core door to a solid one. Paint walls with special sound-proofing paint (yep, it exists). Need to mask annoying sounds? Consider a white noise machine.
Even more ideas so stay tuned for part two!
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
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References
The Clutter Connection: How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do (Cassandra Aarssen, 2019).
Experimental Biology and Medicine (October 21, 2019), Megan E. Beerse, Theresa Van Lith, Scott M. Pickett.
“The Effects of Colour in Work Environment: A systematic review” (July 2016); Nattha Savavibool, Environment-Behaviours Proceedings Journal.
“Toward a Brain-Based Theory of Beauty” (July 6, 2011); Tomohiro Ishizu, Semir Zeki.
“The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature” (December 1, 2008); Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, Stephen Kaplan, Association for Psychological Science.
