Workplace Decorating: Ideas for more productivity
Your workplace is the office and this is where you spend many hours of the day. Therefore, you should create a pleasant, inspiring ambience. This not only gives you a positive view but also increases your productivity and that of your employees. This has even been scientifically proven. Decorating your office is far more than an optional luxury, but rather an essential necessity to achieve above-average performance. Office decoration has an influence on mental state, creativity and concentration. Good reasons to take a detailed look at the important topic of office decoration.
Concept planning for successful office decoration
Very often, the desire for a personalised decoration of the office environment is confused with an accumulation of souvenirs and individual memories on the desks. However, this creates neither an inspiring atmosphere nor a harmonious overall impression for you or your clients. On the contrary, the disorderly accumulation of decorative items creates a sense of chaos and distraction from work and an impression of incompetence among your clients.
Therefore, the first step in professional office decoration is careful concept planning. What motivates your employees and what do they actually need around their workplace every day? Decoration that only has an end in itself and neither creates a positive mood nor contributes to better organisation should be banished from your office as soon as possible. Nobody needs "dust catchers" when decorating their office. Therefore, for us, successful office decorating means a professional basic concept from one of our creative designers. Incorporating ideas for functional and aesthetic design, such as deliberately setting up areas with informative posters or a noticeboard for team news and updates, could promote both order and inspiration in the office environment.
Green Interior Design
Integrate fresh greenery into your office environment with Biophilic Design. Real, living plants have been proven to create a healthy atmosphere in your office. This refers not only to the air quality itself, but also to the psychological effect. Numerous scientific studies have proven that greenery in office decorating has a positive influence on the mental state of mind and productivity. Complemented by matching wall art, office plants, pictures for the office create exactly the right mindset for a positive working atmosphere.
Innovative Green Concepts nowadays allow much more than the classic plant containers with hydroponics. You can hang arrangements with real, completely maintenance-free mosses as pictures on the wall or set up vertical, large-area room dividers as office decorations. What all these green components have in common is that the care required is minimal. Plants that need fresh water are watered by intelligent, fully automatic systems. You can find out how to furnish your office sustainably in our other article.
Decorating the office for the right acoustics
By the way, green plants and green vertical plantings are a particularly effective, ideal form of natural sound insulation. If several employees work in one office or you want to filter out disturbing background noise, significant attenuation can be achieved with targeted greenery planning. But other decorations can also be deliberately used in office decorating to achieve confidential, quiet room acoustics without reverberation effects.
For example, individually designed screens with curved or other free forms are ideal for sound absorption. When optimally integrated into the office decor, they fulfil two functions at the same time: improving the acoustics and acting as a sculpture themselves. Whenever an employee makes a phone call in the office, the listening experience for the caller is decisively improved.
Essential: the right lighting
The influence of lighting conditions in the office is often underestimated. Yet there are many factors that determine whether your employees can work with concentration and without fatigue. It is not enough to buy desk lamps and place them where there is just enough free space on the desk. Impersonal white ceiling lighting is also no longer in keeping with the times and quickly leads to eye fatigue. Ideally, you should plan professional workplace lighting with experts who are familiar with all aspects of ergonomic lighting design. These essentially include:
- Correct integration of daylight
- Combination of direct and indirect lighting
- Smart adaptation of light temperature to biorhythms
- The correct luminance
- The correct color temperature
- Avoidance of glare, reflections and flicker
Reflection of your Brand in the office decor
When decorating your office, make sure that your branding is reflected in the overall design. This is especially true for companies that market a specific product or brand. But even if you offer services, the office decor should match your corporate culture exactly. For example, a lawyer's or a tax consultant's office should provide a serious, confidence-inspiring and rather conservative atmosphere. In a graphic design or marketing agency, on the other hand, the decoration can be much more progressive, creative and innovative. In the latter case, provocative or experimental works of art would also be quite conceivable as wall art or even desirable as an expression of a particularly innovative way of thinking.
Decorating the office with the help of Workplace Consultancy
Various external factors such as the digitalization of the working world and the establishment of segregated zones as a consequence of the pandemic demand new concepts in office decorating. The so-called New Work requires improved workflows, greater flexibility and the best possible use of existing resources. A professional workplace consultancy offers you comprehensive knowledge for adequate office concepts. It guarantees a contemporary implementation of demand-oriented concepts for office decoration.
The influence of colors in office decoration
Why do colors play such an important role in office decoration? Colors play such an important role because they have a direct influence on our psyche. In general, there is a precisely defined range of effects on the subconscious for each color. In a general context, the color red, for example, stands for aggressive effects and is used for alarming signals. In contrast, green always has a calming and natural effect.
Here are the most important colors and their effects in office decorating at a glance:
White: A clear, "clean" color, which, however, when used alone can also very quickly appear impersonal and create an unwanted feeling of "hospital". Therefore, here's a tip: only use white shades tinted with color; this takes away the garish, clinical effect.
Yellow: The color yellow is completely different. It creates a friendly, pleasant atmosphere for you and your customers. The association with the sun is obvious. The related shade orange also has an inspiring, energizing and stimulating effect. Therefore, the shades yellow and orange are ideal when you decorate an office for creative professions.
Red: It is similar with red, but in excess, a strong red can quickly turn into the opposite and even cause stress or aggression. Therefore, our tip: Use red sparingly and as a color accent, then it has a positive stimulating effect. As a financial advisor or lawyer, you should avoid red as much as possible when decorating your office.
Blue: the classic shade associated with coolness. The corresponding effect on the psyche is calming and gives a feeling of sovereignty and strategic thinking. Therefore, when decorating offices, this color tone is particularly suitable for all companies that deal with finance, law and management consultancy.
Green: Green also has a calming effect, but in a different way than its sister color blue. Instead of coolness, green conveys the feeling of being in nature. This is reinforced if you use not only green wall or furniture colors when decorating the office, but also living plants. These are ideal as office decorations and harmonize with any other color.
Planning order when decorating the office
It actually sounds very simple and obvious, yet many people make the mistake of letting themselves be guided only by visually appealing articles when decorating the office, without taking sufficient account of practical relevance. Yet office decoration offers many opportunities to improve order in the office at the same time. The best decoration loses its effect if the desks look more like a storage shelf than a representative workplace. Therefore, when decorating the office, place a lot of emphasis on practical organizational aids. Intelligent storage systems, mobile pedestals and sideboards elegantly create storage space near the desks without detracting from the overall look.
In this context, it is worth pointing out a golden rule that is well known but rarely followed: Less is more. There is nothing worse than overshooting the mark when decorating an office and turning it into a showroom. The uncontrolled accumulation of office decor leads to a messy overall impression that creates unease and discomfort, both for your employees and for your clients and visitors. In contrast, use a few strong, visual accents in the form of a modern sculpture or large-format wall art. These should then have enough space to unfold their effect.
Decorate your office with artwork
If you have the opportunity to integrate a real work of art as an original in your office, you will benefit from the exclusive aura that goes beyond commercially available prints and photos. At the same time, you also reveal a lot about your personality and taste. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage. Therefore, choose the artwork wisely and with your clientele in mind.
Conclusion: Noticeably increase productivity with the right office decoration
All the preceding aspects make it clear: the right design for your office depends on many different factors. Only a careful needs analysis will lead to a successful overall concept that will have measurable results in increasing productivity.
Are you currently planning to decorate your office? Then contact us and we will advise you on your current project without obligation. We look forward to your inquiry!