Productive Office Designs

If you work from home or frequently take office work with you, you understand the difficulty of working remotely. Working from home is a great way to get motivated and stay focused, but even a designated workspace doesn’t guarantee productivity. If you want to make your home office more productive, follow our guide so you can get back to the rest of your home.

Built-in desk

The ideal home office is in a separate room or even in a cave. But if you happen to live in an urban center and are short on space, you may need to improvise a bit. Install a built-in desk in a public area or even in the bedroom like we did here tailor-made home office. It’s the perfect space-saving solution and won’t affect your productivity.

Hang some art

When you’re at home, it can be difficult to motivate you to keep working. If you’re looking for ways to get inspiration, hang art over your desk. Would you like to take a short break from looking at your computer screen? Then just look up. We hung three colorful prints above the desk on this Upper East Side beach vacation for a quick freshen up if needed.

Make some space

If you’re trying to set up your home office in an open area, consider using a large divider to separate your new workspace. For the home office of this Hampton, we installed a geometric wall divider made of reclaimed wood to complement the rustic, modern room and at the same time efficient home office.

Become vertical

Like any workplace, your home office should be organized and optimized for work. One of the easiest ways to tidy up your space is to install shelves where you can put unnecessary bells and whistles. This leaves your desk free so you can keep working. On this pre-war West Village bachelorette party, we installed offset wall shelves to create additional organizational space.

Embrace the dark

Focus and productivity are an essential part of any home office space. So if a more somber atmosphere helps get some work done, consider going for a dark color or even dark wood paneling. In this luxury San Francisco apartment, we turned an underutilized corner into a home office by adding dark wood paneling and pulling up a chair.

Coordinate colors

If you want your home office to feel consistent with the rest of your home, choose a color scheme that matches the rest of your space. We painted the exterior of this Connecticut home gray, white, and red, and painted the home office the same paint job.

Or get brave

If you want to differentiate your home office from the rest of the room, choose a bold, distinct color. In this home office in New Jersey, we painted the walls and bookcases a light, chalky pastel blue and installed a Jonathan Adler light fixture. It brightened the space significantly and set the office apart from the rest of the house.