Styling Your Windows: The Home Office Edit
Recently, we lent our expertise to an article by Trendy Products about styling a chic outdoor office. This time it’s our turn, and we are turning our attention to fashioning indoor working spaces.
As we said over on Vertical Blinds Direct’s blog, home office decors shouldn’t be seen as sterile and desolate wildernesses, completely devoid of any creativity. This space requires you to be focused and proactive; for that reason alone it needs to be an engaging and inviting environment to work in.
Paul Matthews, Senior Designer at Auburn Hill, provided us with some excellent advice which applies to any working space. “You want your home office to be the right balance between functional and stylish. It’s no good having a space which is stylised within an inch of its life and therefore completely unusable.
A home office means you can ditch the boring furniture and sterile environment found in many office blocks, and instead choose pieces which are a little cosier and add a heap of personality to your working space.”
You’ve already read in the article on our sister site about why vertical blinds are a must in any home office, now let’s broaden our horizons; here at Roman Blinds Direct we are giving you room design ideas for a home office that is both functional and fun. Featuring some top room inspiration tips from our own interior designers, as well as some insightful advice from yet more interior style experts, we will show you how to fashion a smorgasbord of styles – all of which include some ultra-stylish vertical blinds.
We will show you how to style office decors ranging from traditionally professional (in the most stylish way possible) to quirky and modern creative hubs, which are still functional working spaces.
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Classic
Before we start breaking out the colourful paint, let’s begin with a more orthodox approach to office room inspiration. Creating a classic home office decor is remarkably simple, and gives you scope for including a range of shades and tones to style a warm and chic working environment.
Cream is the ideal base colour for a classic home office; while still a neutral shade, it is not as clinical as white, so maintains a homely and friendly atmosphere that will still motivate you to work and stay focused.
Your furniture should be made from dark woods to add a rural, vintage feel to the room; a walnut desk, complemented by a rosewood chair, will lend serious warmth to your home office, making you feel comfortable as you work. A cherry wood bookcase is another inspired, natural touch to give added depth to your interior. Wooden ornaments in similar shades act as natural complements to your furniture; incorporate wooden pots to keep your pens in, along with wooden picture frames to keep photographs of your family in, or another image that inspires you.
Accessorise further with a few well-placed metallic finishes like wall mirrors and mirrored drawers and cabinets to store your personal paraphernalia. Aside from helping to reflect light around the room, making it a more uplifting place to work, these finishes will add shine to the vintage decor.
Cream vertical blinds like Touched by Design Somerset Cream or Decorshade Rustica Cream are perfect for enhancing the classic ambience. For an added dimension of style, why not go for a patterned design, such as Aspects Hornton Vanilla or Kineton Cream? [/ezcol_1half]
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Crafts
Home offices have become popular in countless industries, not just in the standard white collar professions. We are seeing home businesses spring up in all kinds of fields, and one that is proving popular is the independent arts and crafts companies. Men and women alike have turned their passion into their careers, selling their handmade products to buyers all over the world, which they create in their very own homes.
For these people, a home workspace needs to be more inspiring and creative than your ‘standard’ home office. Try using two colours to paint your walls. A soft shade of green is a great choice; helping to generate peaceful, productive vibes in a room, it has been shown that green is an ideal colour to be surrounded by for long periods of time, acting as a source of security.
Pastel shades of pink or purple lend a feminine air. Adding harmony and sophistication, the combination of green and pink together fashions an artistic and engaging ambience to really put you in a creative frame of mind.
Your vertical blinds should be soft shades that lend a bright and airy atmosphere to your home office. Again, we recommend gentle pinks and purples, like those of Louvolite Dapple Blush or Riva Thame Lilac, to complement your walls. White window frames are the perfect finishing touch, completing this chic room design.[/ezcol_1half_end]
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Professional
Engaging and fun-loving isn’t everyone’s ambience of choice in a home office, however. Some people need to be able to focus and stay on-track, without any distractions. For a strictly professionally-styled office, Sara Abate Rez of Ambience Design Group suggests using grey as your primary colour: “If you’d like to keep things simple while following the hottest trends, grey is a colour you might want to include in your home office. Being able to focus on your work might be a challenge when placing an office into the comfort of your own home but grey is neutral, which can help to promote focus and concentration.
“Give your home office an updated and sleek look by incorporating one of the many shades of grey, a top trend for 2016. Adding green into the space through the use of plants has a double positive effect, it reduces stress while creating a modern look against the grey.”
Grey and white vertical blinds are ideal for adding a neutral and professional tone in a home office. We recommend Touched by Design Supreme Blackout White, which not only adds chic style but also blocks out external light and distractions. Absolute Light Grey possesses the same properties, and is also a member of our exclusive Touched by Design range of fabrics, lending a contemporary edge to your professional decor.
Accessorise with chrome ornaments; we would suggest a Newton’s Cradle to act as an engaging and stimulating decoration, as well as chrome photo frames that house inspirational quotes, certificates and awards. Finishing touches like metal bins, chrome paperweights, and silver pens enhance the executive aesthetic and make for a very modern office decor. [/ezcol_1half]
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[ezcol_1half_end ]Colour Blocking
A less grey affair in a home office would be to use colour blocking. This is where the bright paint gets brought out – your walls should be positively booming with brash colour. Use whichever ratio of colour you like, but make sure they are bold tones.
For those who are unfamiliar with the expression, colour blocking is a term used in the worlds of fashion and interior design when multiple solid colours are incorporated into one outfit or room. This style of room inspiration is a celebratory and flamboyant one – it is perfect for creatives and extroverted professionals who simply don’t do ‘corporate’.
We would suggest a using sunny shades of blue, yellow, green and pink to paint your walls. A combination of four of the brighter tones in Pantone’s spring 2016 palette – one for each of the four walls – will make for a vibrant and inspiring decor, which is also very much on-trend.
Your vertical blinds can be in any colour you like, although they should be a different colour to the wall in which your window is framed. If you are going to paint this wall yellow, blue vertical blinds like Aspects Solar Light Blue acts as a cool contrast. One the other hand, a yellow vertical blind such as Aspects Colour Solutions Mustard would be a sunny complement to a white wall. There is a lot of room to mix and match a wide range of combinations when colour blocking.
Plants for your desk will add some greenery to the room, and wooden desks in a light tone of pine or maple will lend a warm, earthy ambience. Colourful artwork and murals will enhance the vivaciousness of your home office, injecting energy and optimism into the room. [/ezcol_1half_end]
Have we inspired you to transform a room in your home into a modish home office that suits your working style? Was reading this article the very incentive you needed to restyle your already-existing home office? Whichever is applicable to you, we’d love to see some pictures of your new working space, so why not send us some on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook? Don’t forget to use our unique hashtag #igdtrends.
Make sure you head over to our sister site, Vertical Blinds Direct, to browse their enormous range of stylish vertical blinds, any one of which would be a chic addition to a home office.
