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Your office décor can have an impact on your public image, your employee satisfaction and your company’s productivity. Here are just five ways in which you can help design the perfect office space.
Cut down on clutter
Clutter is bad for concentration and it can make your office feel crowded and disorganized. While a few ornaments here and there can prevent your office from looking too sterile, try not to clutter the place with ornaments. Going paperless can often be a great way of cutting down on clutter – creating digital copies of all your physical documents can prevent the need for filing cabinets and paper storage.
Buy high quality furniture
The quality of your furniture is important as it can reflect on the way people perceive your company. There are also practical benefits of buying high quality furniture such as better durability and better ergonomics. You can shop for high quality office furniture online such as these custom conference tables. You don’t have to pay huge amounts of money for high quality furniture, however you probably want to keep the price mid-range to avoid anything too poor quality.
Embrace color
Offices have traditionally been kept in neutral colors, however recent studies have shown that this can be bad for motivation and inspiration. Try adding small splashes of color here and there – this could include buying colored office furniture or painting the walls a certain color. Blue is thought to be a very calming color, while red is better suited to energizing people. Green meanwhile has been linked with creativity. Consider which color you think would work best for you and your employees.
Let the outdoors in
A lot of offices can feel cut off from the outside world. Consider ways of keeping a connection to the great outdoors. Embracing natural light is important – the vitamin D in sunlight is important for lifting our mood and keeping us motivated. Office plants meanwhile can also have practical benefits, having been shown to improve concentration and improve air quality. On top of this, you should try to keep the office well ventilated as a supply of fresh air will keep people energized.
Create a balance of privacy and openness
A sense of privacy is important for both security purposes and concentration, however a sense of openness is also important for encouraging communication and a welcoming atmosphere. Many offices used to use cubicles, however this has gone out of fashion in favor of an open-plan layout – largely because open-plan is cheaper. While an open-plan layout can be great for encouraging team communication, it’s worth still having a space that people can go to work in private when they need to concentrate or hold private meetings. Try to see if you can achieve this within your office space by having an area for privacy and an area for openness.
