For people who have worked in-house their entire career, it is a relief to finally be able to work from home.
However, these workers might find it harder to focus because their home office still isn’t furnished and designed in a way to stimulate productivity.
Everything from the sound of your neighbor’s lawnmower outside to your kids screaming for food threatens to disrupt your workflow.
In reality, you need to come up with a home office design that will stifle all the distractions so you can focus on the work ahead.
Table of Contents
Ergonomic furniture
Unlike the furniture in your office at work, home office furniture is your responsibility. As tempting as it may be, don’t put style before of comfort.
You are going to spend hours on end sitting in the same chair so it needs to be top-quality and as ergonomic as possible.
Apart from the chair that is, after all, pivotal in a home office, everything else inside the office should be comfortable.
The desk can be custom-made to match the height of your knees to an inch.
Furthermore, the power outlet can ideally be placed next to the desk so you don’t have to run tens of meters of cables across the entire house.
Selecting the right color palette
Apart from comfortable furniture, you should have the right colors in your home office. The palette you select should be reflected from in the tiniest item you keep on the, all the way to the walls.
We all have favorite colors but when it comes to painting the walls of the home office, mild colors like blue or green are ideal for this purpose.
On the other side, colors like red or yellow are too strong and may strain your eyesight. In order to create a contrast, paint the ceiling in a different, darker color.
Introducing plant life inside the home office
It is a well-known fact that plants help relieve stress, so don’t hesitate to adorn the home office with all kinds of plants.
This doesn’t have to an investment, as you have the possibility to simply relocate the flower pots you already have in the house.
Moreover, plants will pump oxygen inside the room you’ve set your home office in. Higher levels of O2 in the air will improve our concentration.
Finally, plants need pots, beds, and vases, so you can decorate these containers to further improve the décor of the home office.
Canceling out the outside noise
Once you have created a corner in the house with Zen-like tranquility, it is time to deal with intrusions from the outside world.
Loud sounds, such as police sirens, construction work, traffic, and folks shouting and screaming in the street can have a detrimental effect on your productivity.
The best way to cancel out these noises is to install soundproof windows like the ones Prestige Plus makes.
These windows are convenient because they replace your old glazed windows 1-to-1, so there is no need for extra masonry work.
Apart from their acoustic qualities, noise-canceling windows come with the perk of being energy-efficient by reducing the amount of air filtration.
Enough natural light and fresh air
During the day, it would be best if you didn’t have to turn any desk lamps in the home office. This is achieved by placing the desk under a large window.
Of course, the window in question should have curtains, awnings, or draperies so you can control the amount of natural light. This will prove essential during the sunniest days of the year.
Apart from plenty of natural light, setting up our home office near a window allows you to have access to fresh air. Ideally, the window should be facing the backyard or some other patch of greenery.
The last thing you need is a home office overlooking a busy street and your home filing up with smog.
If you don’t have access to large windows, then at least make sure that you have a solid air ventilation system in the house.
The connection between storage and clutter
One of the reasons why you are finding it hard to be productive working from a home office is the fact you are surrounded by mess all the time.
Since the “office” is essentially a part of the house, other people living there will often leave stuff in your workspace, causing you to go berserk.
However, if you can come up with an efficient way to get rid of clutter, you’d be able to finally focus on work tasks. The main issue with clutter is its recursive nature.
Clutter keeps coming back because it lacks a proper place in the house and the reason for this is insufficient storage space.
In this sense, an extra drawer or a shelf on your desk can make the difference between getting buried by clutter or having a clutter-free home office which promotes creativity and productivity.
Feel free to schedule regular cleaning sprees in order to completely eliminate clutter.
When it comes to the office at home, interior design and your productivity levels are definitely connected.
It is not all the same what kind of furniture you use, which way the desk is facing, and what kind of windows you have installed at your house.
All the 6 factors listed above directly influence productivity so do your best to control them.
