Upgrade Your Home Office to Boost Productivity

When you use your home office, you want to be comfortable but motivated, ready to be creative and productive. On the flip side, you don’t want a home office that’s too distracting. The first thing to do in a home office makeover is remove any distractions — take out the game consoles, TVs, anything that could interrupt your train of thought. Family photos are OK, but if you have a collage of pics from your Cancun trip right above your computer, that may have to go.

To create a great home office, make adjustments to these key areas of the room:

Lighting/Windows

Artificial lighting can strain your eyes, making it difficult to focus on your work. Sixty-eight percent of employees in an American Society of Interior Design study complained about the interior lighting in their business office settings. Thankfully, we are discussing your home office, and you can change it if you want.

The best lighting is natural lighting. A recent British study published in “The Responsible Workplace” found that windows were the number one determinant for employees’ sense of satisfaction with a building. If you upgrade your windows to allow for more natural lighting, you’ve already improved your home office significantly.

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Walls

You can use color psychology to help produce certain emotional responses. Red, for instance, can provoke courage, strength and energy. Blue supports intelligence, while green fosters emotional balance. Even more interesting is the shade of a color can affect how we perceive temperature. A warm color can provoke us to think the room is actually warmer than it really is, while a cooler color does the exact opposite, according to Forbes. Repainting your office in the color of your choice can still help you in your work mentality, as you will know you will be comfortable with the color and the setting it sets in your home office.

Flooring

The right flooring for a productive home office means having a floor that is easy to move around on and keep clean, but you also want it to be aesthetically pleasing so you are comfortable within the room.  Wood floors are a great option because their smooth surface makes it easy to roll around in your desk chair.  You can install a sound deadaning system under the flooring to minimize the sound transference into other rooms.  Aesthetically, custom wood floor wood floors also offer a variety of styles so you can choose light or dark wood flooring, depending on the overall decor of your office.

Accessories

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of upgrading a home office is finding accessories to go in it. Spend some time looking for a variety of items that could really give your home office a touch of pizzazz. Looking for a contemporary looking floor lamp? Arc lamps provide the look you’re asking for while also accenting your new windows’ natural lighting with its ambient lighting. Want a fun or cute business card holder or some wall decor to fill those bare walls? Etsy has oodles of unique and trendy office decor that meets practically anyone’s taste.

Create a room you love being in, and work will seem a little bit less like work.