Design Your Office Space for Residential Comfort and Professional Results

Design Your Office Space for Residential Comfort and Professional Results

An office is a place to tackle your work, and the office environment impacts how well you’ll do your job. This is important to note when you design your office space. The trend in resimercial design is a way of making employees feel comfortable, boosting their creativity and creating an environment to increase productivity.

But how do you know a new design can work?

Let’s look at the science behind the merging of commercial and residential design.

Look around your office and what do you notice?

How much natural light flows through the space? What colors are used?

These elements have been proven to be important in different ways when you design your office space.

In the mid-1980s, a researcher, Roger Ulrich, wanted to see if there was a relationship between the environment in health facilities and patient well-being. He was exploring if beauty, including the design and mood, affected emotional well-being and physiological stress.

He separated participants in two groups with some participants staying on one floor of the hospital and the other participants staying on another floor. One group looked outside their room and saw trees while the others had windows facing a brick wall.

Patients who saw the trees and not the wall needed fewer medications and reported a greater feeling of well-being than those who had the brick wall for their view.

Various elements in your surroundings will impact mood and energy levels.

Design Your Office with Colors

Colors play a key role when you design your office space.  There’s subjective opinion about which colors affects moods, but there are also universally accepted colors. Blue is one of the most popular colors around the world. So if you have an office with a diverse cultural mix, then blue can be a unifying color.

The London Image Institute provides a useful color chart and describes the emotions that the colors evoke. Blue is the color of trust, serenity and peace, while green evokes harmony and nature. Red is associated with emotions ranging from love to anger.

Photo: Friant Dash Workstation Table

Design Your Office with Lighting

Lighting is key in both corporate and home offices.

In a garment factory, improved lighting led to a 10% increase in production and one-third fewer errors. When you design your office space, let your team have as much access as possible to natural light. Lamps and other lights at workstations should have their light focused properly so there’s no glare or feedback.

Another benefit of letting natural light flow throughout the workspace is that it actually helps people sleep better at night.


Photo: OFS Tangent Lounge

Design Your Office with Layout and Movement

At home, rooms or areas are clearly designated for specific purposes. A kitchen has an obvious purpose and so does a bedroom. Some rooms don’t have clearly defined purposes. There are dining spaces but not as many formal dining rooms as there once were. And in today’s world, living rooms and family rooms blur in their use as well.

The home office is for doing work, especially if an employee is using the space to work remotely.

Yet, we also move naturally from one room to another depending on what we need. You can take calls in the office portion, but you may feel more comfortable sitting on the sofa while reading a report.

Traditionally, in an office setting you’re expected to sit and work at a desk for several hours a day. You do your work in one place and you remain stationary except for eating lunch and taking restroom breaks.

An office setting can be planned to have home-like qualities so that the environment is inviting and motivates people to do their best.


Photo: Friant My-HiteWorkstation, Allermuir Kin Chairs and Source International Laze Chair

When you design your office space, Consider the Abstract Modern Office with a variety of bold colors. Everything from a touch of mid-century modern to the newest décor can fit with this design. This is great for playful brands and companies that want to infuse a touch of energy.

More subdued colors are possible, too, even in an office that has open benching and cubicles since modular furniture comes in a variety of colors.

Layout options are flexible. Consider having workstations for each department in one area while lounge seating is available in a central area. Or, depending on the office size, there can be a lounge area in a central space like the hub and workstations on the perimeter.


Photo: HON Empower Height Adjustable Workstations

If you’re going to re-design your office or make substantial improvements, then let employees know and ask for their feedback since they’re the ones being affected.

Architect Donald Rattner, author of “My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation,” says address issues of durability and safety. Use products that have the residential appeal but are made with commercial manufacturing standards.

Let 2010 Office Furniture Help

Get your questions about office space planning and layouts answered by 2010 Office Furniture. The team has more than 50 years of combined experience, serving corporations, universities, and growing enterprises throughout Southern California.

Contact them with questions about your potential projects.

Read Also: Resimercial Office Furniture
Main Photo: OFS Ani Soft Seating
Resources & Special Thanks to Respective Product Manufacturers: Allermuir, Friant, HON, OFS & Source International 

Energize Your Office with Movement

Energize Your Office with Movement AMQ Kinex

A productive office emphasizes smart movement over a sedentary lifestyle. It’s important to learn how to energize your office with movement that’s good for the body, mind and overall well-being of employees. Moving comes in many ways that are beneficial.

The Problem with Not Moving

Sitting during the workday begins before you arrive at the office. Once you leave home, you may be sitting in the car for thirty minutes and up to an hour on freeways and streets.

Guess what’s happening during that time?

Stress is building. Yesterday’s troubles may still on your mind, or you may have to change routes because of an accident. Anxiousness can kick in while you wonder if you’re going to make it into the office in time for that important meeting or call.

Your mind is active, but you’re physically confined.

So when you get to the office and make it to your workstation, you may be buzzing inside and all fidgety when you’re confined at your desk again.

Sound familiar?


Photo: OFS Genus Chair and Heya Lounge

In recent office history, employees were considered productive when they were sitting at desks and quietly absorbed in their work. The longer they sat still, the better. Those who stretched or got up often for a drink of water or trip to the bathroom were suspected of not focusing or working hard.

In the modern office, that attitude is changing with plenty of studies showing the benefits of moving instead of remaining in one physical place or posture.

Why?

Sitting or standing in one position stresses knees, elbows and ligaments. Posture suffers as well, and parts of the body like the neck and shoulders and lower back muscles get strained and sore. It’s a physics principal that works on inanimate objects, too, like recreational vehicles (RVs).

RVs that aren’t driven need to be on blocks so weight is taken off the tires. The air in the tires won’t circulate and the vehicle’s pressure will ultimately ruin the treads. Our bodies are similar.

Sitting at a desk for a few hours at a time makes you like that RV stuck in the driveway, especially if you’re at a workstation that doesn’t support your natural body movements.

Wonder why your brain gets foggy?
Photo: Maverick Height Adjustable Table 

When your blood isn’t circulating well then you have less oxygen flowing to where your thinking occurs.

Movement helps you maximize personal productivity.  That’s why it’s important to remember to energize your office with movement.

The Benefits of Movement in the Office

Moving is essential for learning because it ignites our mental functions. When you’re moving, blood is flowing to the brain.

Changing positions reduces weight on specific points of the body and minimizes stress on your joints.

A study advising ‘sit less, move more,’ available as an abstract by the National Institutes of Health, notes that the use of active work stations reduces fatigue levels and lower back discomfort.

The study, focused on six universities in Spain, concluded that simply reducing “insufficient physical activity” by 10 minutes had health benefits. Ratcheting movement up to two hours a day was highly recommended.


Photo: Energize your office with movement with Humanscale Office Ergonomics

Here are simple ways to add movement in the office and promote employee wellness.

  • Supply ergonomic chairs that support a person’s weight and allow natural movements
  • Use height adjustable desks
  • Think of “90/10” – 90 minutes in one position, followed by 10 minutes of movement
  • Encourage stretching exercises at workstations
  • Use good posture while on phone calls
  • Allow working in different areas, including out of the office
  • Take brief walks at lunchtime
  • Make water breaks part of the day
  • Install a treadmill or two if space allows
  • Bring in a masseuse once or twice a month to give chair massages

Quality ergonomic chairs like the Humanscale Freedom Task Chair are engineered for movement. A chair like this adjusts to the user’s weight automatically, including a “weight-sensitive recline system.” Armrests are adjustable allowing for a comfortable posture when typing on a keyboard and looking at a monitor.

Photo: Humanscale Freedom Chair

Desks like the Maverick Height Adjustable Desk are useful for executive offices, reception areas or for shared work surfaces. An employee can sit with a desk surface that’s just right for them or raise the desktop and stand to change positions.

Make Movement Part of the Office Culture

Moving more in the office means you’ll also have to trust employees for acting responsibly and to take charge of accomplishing their goals. Don’t expect to look over their shoulders and micro-manage their work.

Stay in communication. Set deadlines they have to meet, no matter the location they’re in.

Photo: AIS Height Adjustable Table

The Covid-19 pandemic tossed the office environment into chaos when stay-at-home orders were issued and the familiar workplace suddenly changed. Virtual meetings became normal and expected.

If you have employees who want to sit at their workstations and then switch locations to another part of the office temporarily that form of movement can be healthy. If someone wants to go home early and finish the workday there, or even in a park, then that could a helpful way to minimize stress.

A smartphone itself is an amazing communication tool with its access to social media platforms that allow video and text messaging for updates and progress reports from anywhere with a wi-fi signal.

Movement doesn’t mean a lack of productivity or skipping out on work.

Space Planning is Essential


Photo: AIS Day to Day Powerbeam

The team at 2010 Office Furniture knows that an office isn’t just a collection of useful furniture. They’ll help you arrange your workspace to help energize your office with movement, to promote office health, productivity and effective communication.

Share your office design and space planning needs with 2010 Office to get the layout that addresses your needs most effectively.

2010 Office Furniture supplies Southern California’s most distinguished companies, from large corporations and prestigious universities to leading nonprofits in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and the Inland Empire.

Contact 2010 Office Furniture and share your thoughts.

Read Also: Social Distancing Tips and Adjusting to the Realities of Covid-19 in the Office
Main Photo: AMQ Kinex Workstations
Resources & Special Thanks to Respective Product Manufacturers: AMQ Solutions, OFS, Maverick Desk, Humanscale & AIS