Creating the Perfect Home Office with Interior Designer Gemma Schofield

Looking to revamp your WFH space? We caught up with Gemma Schofield of Lifestyle Interiors, who designed our stunning Novus show apartment/home in Stretford, to find out how to create the perfect home office set up.    

Choose a space:

Set up a dedicated space so you can separate work and home life. It’s so easy when working from home to get caught up in what you’re doing and forget about home life. Due to the current circumstance, a lot of people have been forced to set up workspace anywhere they can find which isn’t the most convenient situation. It is important that your workspace stays separate to the places you choose to relax in otherwise, you will never fully be switched off from work of an evening or a weekend. On the other hand, this also allows you to be in the zone when trying to stay focused on your work rather than being distracted by everything else you could be doing at home, it allows you to mentally separate until your work day is done. 

Biophilic elements:

Biophilic design is the element of nature in the home and work space, which is said to encourage a better physical and mental wellbeing, therefore creating a more open and optimistic state of mind. Biophilic design involves making the most of sensory elements of nature and introducing natural material colours and textures. There are so many easy ways to introduce nature in the home working space. Good natural lighting, placing plants and greenery around your working space and choosing natural textures in the furniture you select are all small and easy ways to encourage this element into your surroundings and make a difference to your working day.

Comfort:

Good ergonomics could be the difference between a happy productive day of working compared to a variety of issues such as back problems, eye strain, headaches and more. Ergonomics refers to the design of a product and how it can enhance safety, comfort and productivity. Most of us are used to being in a well-furnished workplace where furniture and hardware will be considered and even sometimes tested to ensure its suitable for multiple hours of use at a time whereas, working from home requires you to initially just make do with what you already have. Unfortunately, this can’t be an option if working from home is going to be long term, because as mentioned before, you can end up with a whole load of long lasting problems. Investing in the correct furniture will make a huge difference to your working day - office chairs for example, are usually made with well tested back and neck support, allowing you to sit on it for extended periods of time without any issues compared to a hard dining chair or a sofa you end up slouched into. Again, work desks are just as important, you need to make sure that the height of your work desk and your office chair relate. If your desk is too low you will end up finding yourself hunched over again, causing problems with the back and neck. It really is worth investing in the correct furniture.

Colours:

Colour can play a huge part in how we behave and how our brain reacts. Choosing office paint colour becomes a bit more complex due to the fact that certain colours are proven to make us more productive and give us more energy and motivation. A few examples of colours that work best in a home office and why:

Blue - a commonly used workplace colour, has been proven to have a positive impact on productivity whilst being calming at the same time.

Yellow - This is viewed as an optimistic colour and has been proven to increase levels of creative thinking. It is often found used in creative workspaces or areas which are designed for collaboration. 

White - Whilst a lot of people see white as boring and clinical, again it can have such a calming effect on a space and the mind.

Even adding hints of these colours into your workspace through the material on your chosen furniture or on your desk accessories can inject life into the space and make it feel a better place to work. Understandably not everyone has a separate room which they can repurpose as an office and they could be using the corner of the lounge as a set up for example, so it can of course be difficult to justify re-painting.

All of the things listed above are just small and easy options to help your working day from home feel a little more positive and productive. The change from being in the office surrounded by fellow colleagues to being at home, on our own or living with somebody else, whilst adjusting to the current situation has been mentally draining for a lot of people and left us unmotivated. If this is going to be a long term option for a lot of companies then it is important that we do all we can to try and build that motivation back up and make working from home enjoyable.