Putting the Home in Home Office

The wonderful thing about a home office is that you can literally make yourself at home and create a working environment that is tailored to your personal needs. Sometimes space limitations may require you to combine your working space with some other type of living space. When a home office is part of a bedroom or living room, it’s essential to integrate the home office trappings into the décor in a way that doesn’t look like you have an office cubicle parked in your living room.

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A stylish home office typically revolves around a stylish desk. The bigger and bulkier the desk the harder it is to integrate into the home décor. For my current home office I accidentally bought a console with two drawers instead of a traditional desk. A console is narrower than a desk and often used in areas like hallways. This mistake turned out to be a happy accident because my home office is located in a bedroom and the narrow console blends in with the furnishings much better than a wider desk would have.

It’s not necessary to buy a desk with huge drawers large enough to fit piles of business related files. Buying cabinets and other containers to hold files allows for more flexibility in how you arrange your furniture in a room. Some file cabinets are designed to look like dressers to blend into the home environment more easily. To keep smaller sets of files close at hand without a filing cabinet, you can buy a stylish tote bag specifically designed to hold files. Or you can simply run out and buy a roomy tote bag and insert a file holder inside the bag.

No matter how stylish the furnishings, between printers, computers and office supplies, it’s difficult to disguise the home office aspect of a room completely. What you can is downplay the office vibe by coordinating pieces in a way that reads harmonious home décor not hard working home office.

In my home office/bedroom the black console that I use for a desk sits in between a black cabinet with mirrors on the front doors, and another cabinet that is completely covered with mirrors. The silver pulls on the drawer of the console subtly tie in the mirrors while the black framed memo board hanging above the console, the wall clock with the black and silver frame and the black paper tray sitting on the console create a coordinated harmonious look. In the corner of the room I have a rocking chair with a silver chrome frame and black vinyl cushions. The end table next to the bed and the cabinet at the end are also all black. The black furnishings work because the walls, carpeting and other furnishings in the room are lighter in color which prevents it from feeling like a cave.

One of the cheapest ways to make your home office feel more homey is to reduce the amount of paperwork sitting around. There have been moments where it looked like I collected papers as a hobby because I had so many piles of them sitting around. Once I started going through papers and organizing them into files or throwing them out I found it not only improved the look of the room it improved my productivity as well. It’s easier to find what I need when I don‘t have to move mountains of papers to find it.