When you work from home, your office space is important. Blue carpet and yellow walls do nothing for your inspiration, let me tell you that! After 2 years of working in a pretty ugly office space, it was time for a little renovation project…
Welcome to my office!
It’s hard to believe we moved into our house in 2017, just a month after we got married. We didn’t really have much time available to start renovating straight away due to Chris being a Wedding Photographer – our Summers are spent photographing Brides and Grooms which leaves little time for DIY. We are both lucky in that we have an office each and as we both work from home, I’d say this makes such a difference (we previously shared a small office in our first home!) We had prioritised the living room & bigger house jobs (new windows etc!) first and then it was time for my office to get some much-needed t.l.c…
It’s safe to say, I love it!
BEFORE
Uninspiring.
As you can see, my office wasn’t exactly the most inspirational room! I can’t even believe I managed to get inspired to work in this room, let alone find somewhere to film videos in it! I’m lucky that it’s such a big room and a great space for me to work in every day but as you can see – it seriously lacked storage solutions and I knew it could be designed in a better way… most of the room was just wasted space.
This room did have some horrible old wardrobes in, which we ripped out after a while of living here. After this, I had my clothes hanging on rails and piled in boxes, as well as all my beauty samples in plastic drawers that used to topple over on the regular. I could never find the top I wanted or the foundation I needed.. everything was just an unorganised mess.
My desk was facing out the window and I did move this around quite often but never really found a good solution that made the office any better. The carpet was blue and the walls a creamy yellow… all in all, just a bit meh and uninspiring. Eventually, I gave up and moved my computer into the dining room just for a change and worked there for such a long time until it was finally the right time to start decorating this room. First, we had the Artex plastered over on the ceiling and this made SUCH a difference. My Dad helped plaster some walls that were a bit lumpy (which was more of a job than we first thought!) and a lick of paint made SUCH a difference…
AFTER
Originally I was going to paint the main wall in my office dusty pink. I knew I wanted a pop of colour and decided that I was going to “be safe” with something more neutral, I tried so many different testers but never managed to find ‘the one’. THEN a late-night Pinterest search happened and I saw so many beautiful orange walls, my mind changed in a matter of minutes. I have always loved orange but never considered painting a room in it! The next day I went to B&Q (UK DIY store) with my Mum and purchased ‘Apricot Mocha’ in their Valspar Paint and it was perfect for this room.
If you didn’t already know, orange is actually such a calming colour.
Read - Small home office ideas
With a little help…
I really wanted any wood in this room to be light as I felt that would work with the colour scheme best and give it that Mediterranean vibe I was after. I came across this great corner bookshelf and knew it would be perfect to fill this space, which prior to the shelf was just empty and void – what else can you really put in a corner like this?! I wanted a few surfaces that I could “style up” and this is perfect because it fits in the space perfectly (it also matches my desk & dressing table too!)
I decided it was time for a new desk chair (hello bad back!) and when Flokk got in touch it was literally as if they read my mind. Flokk create great office chairs that have support and such great features too – I chose the HÅG CREED 6006 chair. You can see more of the chair in my Office Tour video at the end of this video but it is honestly so comfortable and gives my back the support it needs when I’m sat at my desk all day – it also blends into my office design really well and isn’t clumpy like some office chair designs tend to be!
Read more - Inspiring ways to style your home office
This room doubles up as my ‘dressing room’ too, as there was the perfect space for fitted wardrobes and with it being the second biggest room in the house (lucky me!) it made sense for everything I own to be in one place! I have never owned a dressing table before, so it really is a luxury to have this in here (even though I’m not sure I would recommend the company I purchased from, as I had this sent out multiple times due to damage – something to consider!) The lights that run around the back are actually stick on, battery-powered lights which really brighten up this space.
It really is so nice to have a place for storage after so many years of living out of boxes under the bed, or wardrobes that are far too small for all of my things! My huge wardrobes are the perfect size for the space I had too which worked out really well.
