Decor Portfolio

{mosimage}The great technology, revolution of the latter part of the twentieth century has impacted upon our lives in no less a way than the industrial revolution on the lives of the people in the mid-nineteenth century. All the commuting, the monolithic head office, the secretaries, the separation from home and family – these embedded life threads are gradually being consigned to the history books.  Our concerns for quality of air, of work time and of family like have ensured their demise.
The home office, for many, provides the perfect solution.  It permits you to work variable hours to suit your lifestyle and that of your family in agreeable surroundings and ensures that little time is wasted on travel.
Your home working area can adopt many guises depending upon the type of work undertaken and the space available.  Whatever the set-up, your office should offer you the easiest possible method of working.  With the working week averaging some forty hours, it is clearly worth spending some time on planning the space where it is going to take place.
Distractions in the home can come from many directions – interruptions from family members, demands created by other activities happening in the same space, callers at the door and so on.  For your office to be productive in these circumstances, you will need to isolate yourself to some extent from what is going on around you.  This may involve housing the office in a separate building, attaching locks to the door, installing separate telephone lines or even building in some form of soundproofing.
The professional home office should reek of efficiency.  Not only will this impress the visiting bank manager, business colleagues, representatives and clients, but it will also help you make the transition from domestic to work more so much more easily. Creating a dedicated work area that is furnished to match and which is not used for any other purpose can best engender this atmosphere.  The ideal office has its own entrance and cloakroom nearby.  Coffee-making facilities and comfortable seating for guests are an added bonus.
Decorations should generally tend towards the more serious colors (neutrals and deep being particularly suitable) and distracting patterns used with caution.  Many suitable types of flooring are available and selection will most probably be determined by budget.  Cord carpets are reasonably priced; they are hardwearing and will not be easily damaged by chair castors (less hard-wearing floorings can be protected by clear plastic mats positioned beneath desk chairs).  Soft furnishings are best kept restrained – simple clean lines are discreet trims to give a tailored finish.  Should funds be limited, a basic cloth such as tickling, made up with trims of petersham ribbon, could be used to great effect.
Lighting needs to be well targeted and care should be taken to ensure that glare is not caused by the reflection of light fittings on a computer screen.  Remember also to light storage areas and bookshelves.  To make best use of any available daylight, site desks directly in front of windows (ensuring that these are screened in some way if the view beyond is like to cause a distraction).
It may be tempting, in this domestic environment, to incorporate residential furnishings.  These will certainly make the office appear more homely, but for comfort and efficiency, purpose-made office furniture is recommended. A computer stand on castors to house monitor, keyboard, printer, paper and so on is ideal and will accommodate all these items at the right height.  Your chair is equally, if not more, important.  This should be well made, ergonomically designed and adjustable so that your sitting position is not injurious to your posture.
Nothing detracts more from the appearance of an office than for every surface to be spilling over with paperwork, files and samples. Far from it promoting an image of endeavor, it demonstrates that the owner is disorganized and consequently inefficient.  This problem can be overcome by the provision of sufficient, conveniently placed and well-designed storage space.  Storage units can, or course, be in the form of freestanding cupboards and shelves, but look much neater and more streamlined if built in.  Should the room already contain fitted wardrobes, the interiors of these could be converted: the rails could be replaced with suitable partitioning or, if the room is to be reused as a bedroom in the future, perhaps a free-standing framework could be incorporated into the wardrobe.
It may be that you are not professionally employed, yet still need some sort of management center to run your personal life and an active household efficiently. This office could well be based upon nothing more than a telephone and a file, and findings a suitable location should not cause a problem.  The bay window of a bedroom, the space in the hallway under the stairs, a desk un the library, a recess in the dinning room, a cupboard in a rarely used guest room – these may all be capable of housing a mini office.
Much can be done to disguise work and storage elements in a multi-functional room.  Files can be bound in attractive wallpaper; a trestle table can be draped with a full-length cloth that co-ordinate with your room scheme which conceals beneath in your work paraphernalia, and pin boards can be made of attractive material trellised with some pretty ribbons.
 As an alternative to making your work accessories good to look at, you might consider concealing your whole area within a cupboard, behind a screen or masked from view behind a curtain or blind.