There is a range of criteria which your office should obviously satisfy. It should be interesting, but not distracting; capable of fostering focus and concentration, but not boredom; relaxing for your workers, but not to the extent where they treat it like a spa.
It’s no wonder that designing an office can make you feel like Batman trying to unravel one of the Riddler’s riddles, but you might be surprised by how many rules you can actually get away with breaking when it comes to office design. The following design ideas certainly attest to that…
Overlaying a period space with modern elements
5 Ways to Make the Office More Inviting
Right now, your workplace might be a rather drab, cookie-cutter office – a “vanilla box”, as designers would call it, though that piece of parlance does rather make it sound like ice cream. You could truly feel like the cat who got the (ice) cream if you were to move into a vintage building instead.
Better still, you could decorate that space with modern, up-to-date elements. “It’s an incredible opportunity for not only historic preservation, but also adaptive reuse,” Inc. staff writer Kevin J. Ryan quotes one interiors expert as saying.
Color your staff curious with color-blocking
State-of-the-Art Office Furnishings
The process of color-blocking involves placing solid colors from opposite ends of the spectrum alongside each other rather than subtly blending different hues through gradients.
It’s hard for the resulting effect not to instantly draw the eye. Displaying, say, pinks alongside greens and blues adjacent to yellows and oranges can give your office walls the punchy, vibrant impact of an Andy Warhol artwork. However, the color arrangements don’t have to be completely random.
You could, for example, give each area of your office its own distinct color, therefore helping employees and clients to see where they should be and when.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
Remember open-plan offices? Actually, you probably wish you could forget them. At some point, they took off amidst a blast of hype about their supposed benefits for fostering collaboration. Then, they went out of fashion as more of their drawbacks became clearer.
CNBC cites research revealing that, in open-plan offices, 90% of employees experience rises in stress levels, blood pressure, conflict and turnover rates. However, recent years have seen pods introduced to provide workers with quiet spaces in which to take phone calls or even just quick breaks.
These sleek, self-contained booths look set to rescue the reputation of open-plan spaces – and with it, the sanity of your staff. This, in turn, would bode well for your clients’ experiences with your staff.
Office design that is… anti-office
Setting Up an Office for Success
You might have expected the lobby of a hotel or airport to feel too distracting as a place to work… until you actually tried working there, perhaps during a corporate trip. Doesn’t it work surprisingly well? You could take cues for your office back home, such as by adding luxurious furniture.
The staff at Maris are experts in designing offices and helping clients to notice unique, exciting possibilities like these.
