Office design - 4 tips for optimal design of the workplace

When you need to decorate your office, there are several elements that are important to bear in mind in order to create the perfect office layout. An optimal office layout must enable a workplace environment where employees can concentrate and be motivated.

We have gathered four different pieces of advice on how you can create the optimal design for the workplace. Read below to get inspired.

Make sure you have good lighting

When you need to decorate an office, an extremely important element is the lighting. The right lighting can drastically help to improve working conditions.

When it comes to finding the right lighting, remember that you are not simply limited to lamps. You can also work with natural light, which can play a crucial role in the office space lighting. Given that, it is still usually necessary to supplement the natural light with lamps.

The sun may not always show its shining face, so you need to have enough lighting options to light up the office at times when it’s dark outside.

It is, however, a good idea to have the option of adjusting how much light should be on at a given time. It is often possible to adjust the lighting so that there is the necessary light in the office from a combination of both lamps and natural daylight.

One piece of advice is that you should try to provide ‘zoned lighting’ so that you can turn the lighting on and off in different zones.

A delight for the eyes and the ears - decorating with sound-absorbing elements

If you have an office with several employees who have assigned and permanent seats, having sound-absorbing elements to divide them can be an advantage. Several different solutions can enhance the acoustics of a room, and you can, therefore, be creative in  combining several different elements.

A general piece of advice is that it is always good to put something on the walls. This ensures that the sound is not reflected nearly as much throughout the whole workspace. Pictures, paintings, posters, and the like are therefore a great solution. And as an added bonus, they also adorn the walls.

Another solution can be acoustic panels or boards. These elements help to absorb the sound in the room so that it does not reflect and bounce off the walls. For example, we use acoustic panels on our telephone box MuteBox in order to improve the acoustics in the office.

These are just a few examples of how you can use office décor to help improve the workspace acoustics.

Common to all the solutions is that they not only have a practical purpose, but they also decorate the office at the same time. This means a practical interior design solution can meet several needs - definitely something that is worth considering in an open office layout.

Adding ‘green elements’ to the office

When you are about to embark on your interior design journey, it is also a great idea to think about adding some ‘green elements’ into the décor. We are, of course, referring to plants.

You should obviously not turn your office into a rainforest where it is impossible to move around, but a few green plants in various corners can help to lift the office décor quite a bit.

If you do not have green fingers, it may pay to choose plants that are easy to keep - it might, therefore, be a good idea to ally yourself with a specialist at your nearest plant centre - or invest in some artificial plants.

In addition to this, you can advantageously choose plants with ‘good properties’. There are several plants that are particularly good at cleaning the air of dust, bacteria and the like. Plants can, therefore, be a great addition to the office décor if you want to improve the indoor climate.

Provide a warm welcome to all guests

The main purpose of the office interior is typically to create a good environment where employees can work efficiently. However, it is not always solely for the sake of the employees.

Depending on the type of business you have, it may prove advantageous to think about the first thing any guests in the business will encounter.

Not every business has the advantage of having a separate reception area, so it can, therefore, be a good idea to think of creating a welcome or waiting area within the larger office interior. This provides a more welcoming environment for all guests - a place for a visitor to wait until the person responsible for the meeting is ready.

There are several different ways you can create an inviting area where guests can wait. First of all, it is preferable to have a place where the guest can sit. This could be a sofa, chair, bench, or something similar.

It is also nice to have a small side desk or coffee table - somewhere to put a computer or tablet. If you are really dedicated to welcoming your visitors, you should make sure to offer  a cup of coffee or a glass of water for the guest whilst they are waiting. 

All things considered, it is relatively simple to create an inviting area for guests. It is just a matter of prioritising it in the office décor plan.

Office Décor Inspiration: 3 Growing Trends

Does the office need a little love, or do you just want to create an even better workplace?

New things are constantly happening in the general field of interior design as well as in the interior design of offices - and like everything else, some trends have come to stay, whilst others are passing ships that disappear as fast as they come.

In order to dive a little deeper into the trends of the time, we have collected three trends which we think are worth noting (we predict that they will stick around for at least a few years):

3 trends in workplace decor:

Trend #1: Colours, colours, colours

Whilst everything used to be clinical and in very muted colours, we now see more and more colours in office interiors - and that is certainly not a bad idea. Because colours do something to the brain - and a single wall here and there, in a fresh colour that ‘pops’, will put a smile on most people's faces. How about, for example, matching some of the colours in the office with your logo, to make your office truly yours?

Trend #2: The home and office flow together

We work more and more from home, and most workplaces are becoming more and more flexible when it comes to both meeting times and locations. And we can see this in the way we decorate our offices. We are more courageous in putting some personality into our office décor than we used to be, and into the workplace décor in general. You can easily throw in a couple of lush sofas and hang some cool art on the walls - you need to feel like there are people working here.

Trend #3 Multifunctional workspaces

Having a personal desk is very much still a thing - but more and more people are starting to set up zones and work areas dedicated to the different business needs within a workplace.

This applies to everything from lounge areas, where you can brainstorm with your colleagues, or take a break on your own, to a variety of open and closed spaces that meet the way we work today.

What does the workplace of the future look like?

As our way of working changes, so does our need for what an office can do. If you ask the experts in office interior design about the new thinking around workplaces, it is very clear that the offices of the future will look somewhat different to how we may know them today.

Predictions for the workplace of the future include:

• Workplaces become smarter, for example, with the help of intelligent, technological solutions.
• The workplace adapts to our way of working with zones for relaxation, meetings, and concentration.
• Remote work is accommodated with the option of flexible meeting times, where you can show up as it suits you and the company - you may not have your own table, but you may have a workstation that is available to you 24/7.
• We can’t forget about sustainability - both in materials and in the way we think. Recycling, sustainable choices, and responsible materials will take up even more space.
• The workplace becomes a place where you can also hang out and just be social - transitions between private life and work merge more, and this makes the workplace more personal and homely.

We are already seeing many of these trends in the current style - and if you ask the experts, the architects and the leading authorities in the field of work environments, the points mentioned above will be some of the biggest trends we will see in the future.

So, if you need office décor ideas, now is the perfect time to start embracing the future trends.