Home office design - the choices I made and why

This is a collaborative post.

Despite having previously talked about my dream home office, when we moved house and I got my own office I designed it very differently.

Some of the reasons behind that were economical, I didn’t want to buy too many new things, and some of the reasons were just that I changed my mind!

dream work from home office — My previous dream office

The furniture

I have mostly black furniture, which I chose to add a bit of contrast to the predominantly white walls.

Whilst I like the white furniture and white walls look I knew that in the long term, I would find it too clinical looking and it would frustrate me.

I have a large sturdy desk as I use two monitors, my laptop and a printer on my desk alongside endless amounts of clutter, chargers, a microphone and speakers so I needed something strong!

The flooring

Unlike offices in purpose-built buildings, when you have a home office there are limited choices for your flooring.

Whilst I work in my office full time there is only myself so I didn’t feel something hardwearing like resin flooring was necessary but equally, I didn’t want something my office chair would quickly ruin.

In the end, I chose a carpet I liked but with a hardwearing underlay designed for high-traffic areas such as stairs or offices. I also have a plastic floor protector over my carpet which hopefully will make it last longer.

Some types of flooring are so noisy if you are moving around on your chair frequently so this is something I considered too. As we have only been here 6 months now it is hard to see yet if this is the best choice.

Maybe next time I will go for something more hardwearing like the resin floors. I have seen resin driveways so know they must be hardwearing so maybe that is the way forward!

The walls

For my job, I take a lot of photographs of products, and sometimes of myself so I wanted quite simple walls.

That said I did also want a feature wall that I liked but that would also look good as a photo background so I chose rose gold and brick design which you can see in the photo below.

I preferred it to the more natural brick designs as they all seemed so dark and more in fitting with an older house, our house is only 20 years old so still quite modern!

I am also planning on adding a bit of a gallery wall on one of my other walls, the one behind my desk, of motivational phrases and photos that make me smile.

I am also conscious of not to over-clutter my office too which is hard because I like so many things!