By Franki Hanke

Invigorate your workspace without a full renovation.

This year, many people created their first home office in the dining room with a poof-turned-desk chair or suddenly purchased a writing desk for a corner of the living room. 

However, your workspace’s interior design should be curated, purposeful, and inspirational. Easily bring new life to your office space with these four home office design ideas you can introduce without major renovation.

1. Add Storage

One of the largest distractions in a home office is clutter. If you want to revitalize your workspace, add storage space or shelving to keep clutter at bay and add more visual interest. 

Create a Separate Workspace with a Bookshelf

If you’re creating a workspace in your living room, create a natural partition with additional storage. With the Ikea Kallax bookcase as a room partition and the Ikea Kvissle and Tjena organizers, the desk beneath is left open to work.

Add Floating Shelves

Typically cheaper and easier to install than large storage units, floating shelves are customizable to the wall space you have. Balance books and storage boxes with greenery. 

Bring on the Bookshelves

If you have irregular walls, create built-in bookshelves by installing shelves between the narrowest wall points that take an odd, small space and create something useful. 

2. Utilize the Walls

Ditch Wall Art, Use Paint

Wall art can be beautiful and inspirational, but for small spaces that need to be focused and uncluttered, too much action on the walls can feel overwhelming. Instead, save money and simplify your wall’s style with paint instead. 

Accent Wall

Add a pop of color with an accent wall. Choose a complementing color to your main paint or the room’s other decor. Use a deep, dark color to extend and enlarge a small space or a bright pop of color to infuse energy into the room. 

Arch 

With a simple shape that’s easy to do yourself, a painted arch can create structure and frame spaces in a minimalist, affordable way. Plus, it provides a pop of color that’s easy to personalize to your color palette and personal style. 

If you have a larger room that you’re creating a home office in a segment of, an arch can create a dedicated, small space for your workspace without it looking lost within the entire room. 

Paint an arch slightly wider than your writing desk to frame the work area within the arch and segment your home office space from the larger room. 

To frame cabinetry or a filing cabinet, add a rectangular shape intersecting the arch that shoots to the side and defines additional horizontal space. 

If an arch is intimidating, instead paint a rectangle from the baseboard to the ceiling defining the space. Depending on your ceiling, paint the rectangle continuing onto the ceiling and hang a chandelier or pendant within the final segment above your workspace below. 

Mural 

To bring more personality to the entire room, choose one wall for a mural. Even for the less-than-artistic, there are easy ways to DIY a decorative mural fit for a design studio. Freehand something simple or purchase a stencil to guide you. 

Geometric Shapes 

Much like painting an arch, create a large-scale mural by combining several geometric or organic shapes together. A brighter color palette will result in a bold style while softer colors can bring a more textural style.  

Repeating Marks

Simplify your DIY mural even further with a simple, repeating mark. Use a stamp or brush to create a repeating pattern to add texture to your space. 

Angular Lines

Take the guesswork out of your painting with an angular design created with tape. Tape your design out with painter’s tape and then paint different sections. 

Create a Gallery Wall

Add more depth and character to your home office with a gallery wall. Use a variety of sized frames to fill out out the space above your writing desk. Curate prints based on what you want for your space. 

→ Focus with a Muted Color Palette

Keep your color palette simple for a modern home office that draws less attention. 

→ Curate Your Inspiration

Compile the artworks that inspire your own work. Match them together by color palette or pick just a few prints to balance more variety together. 

→ Show off Your Accomplishments 

There’s no place better than your own office to show off your accomplishments. Frame an image from a big moment alongside your diploma, publications, or awards. 

3. Embrace Light

For better focus and energy, light is one of the best ways to re-invigorate your workspace. If you have access to natural light, use it. 

If you’re lacking in natural light, install additional lighting. Don’t underestimate the power of a new light fixture in energizing a room. But, I don’t have an outlet there! Guess what! You don’t even need one! Use rechargeable lightbulbs for spaces where you’re lacking outlets for a desk lamp or sconces or the wiring for a chandelier. 

Use this hack to add a table lamp to a shelf of the office desk without a cluttering cord or hunting for an outlet. Extra lighting with this tip can transform a space from a dark cubby to a sunny space.

4. Add a Coffee Station

If you have a larger home office, utilize more of the space by adding a coffee station. Not only will this engage more of your room, but will cut down on the explorations through the rest of your living space that inevitably introduces more distraction throughout the day. 

Create an affordable coffee stop in a Scandinavian design with an Ikea cube unit. Combine a coffee machine for an on-demand coffee or simplify with a coffee carafe you fill up once in the morning and bring into the office with you. 

For a modern home office, add metallic accents with a classic, stainless steel look or warm it up with a Teakwood finish of the S’well Carafe. Fill out space with extra mugs, flavoring syrups, or decor objects. 

If your home office uses other supplies (like if you run a product-based small business), instead of a coffee station you could add an order packing station or production organization that can fill space, add some visual interest, and declutter another space with a better organization solution.

No matter how you choose to decorate your office space, your workspace should prepare your mind for work with focus, inspiration, and maybe a little caffeine.

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