Bringing Finishing Touches to the Home Office
When it comes time for final touches, you want your home office to be neutral; we recommend using the same colours that you use throughout the rest of the house for continuity. You can impact the room with colour by using books, art, and a few desk items.
Here are some guidelines for bringing life to your home office:
- Add plants. Plants are an easy way to do this, and they bring the room to life. A fern in a basket can be fanned out enough to cover a space about 30 inches wide, and it doesn’t cost much. You might also add a small plant to a bookcase or credenza.
- Hang carefully chosen art. Add colour to the office with larger pieces of art, staying away from sex, liquor, or political themes.
- Remember that both men and women have home offices, so yours should be gender-neutral. Travel photos are great for a home office, especially if you continue the theme with a globe or atlas.
- Hide your trade periodicals in attractive magazine boxes and place them neatly in the bookcase.
- Store office odds and ends in matching storage baskets and place the baskets neatly in the bookcase or storage space in the home office.
- Use books as props. Put one on the desk and several in the bookcase to showcase the office. Remove book jackets from hardcover books to reveal more colour. Titles usually are printed in metallic ink, which gives the bookshelf a look of quality. Remember to use discretion when selecting book titles to showcase.
Depersonalizing the office space is important, but if you have diplomas or award plaques that are important to running and functioning of your day-to-day operations, you do need to keep them in your office. Display only the important documents, nicely framed and hung on a side wall, and then pack away the rest.
Leaving up diplomas and awards only encourages people to look into your life instead of considering the space, so don’t leave these items on display unless you need to.
