If your office is unappealing, you’ll have a tough time convincing potential employees to come to work in a dull, drab, and uninspiring place. As far as clients are concerned, you’ll feel uncomfortable bringing your customers to the office for meetings and other potential business deals too.
Instead of spending time in an office that you hate, you should do everything in your power to create a warm and inviting place for all to enjoy. By approaching office design this way, you’ll have happy employees, impressed customers, and you’ll feel great about your new workplace digs.
With that said, let’s take a look at nine cool office design tricks to help you spruce up your space and make it look absolutely amazing on the cheap.
1. Hide Your Electrical Cords
You may not realize this – or maybe you already do – but your electrical cords stick out like a sore thumb in an office environment. These unsightly cords strewn about everywhere are not only unattractive; they’re also a potential safety hazard since employees and customers could very easily trip over them.
Your best bet is to cover up your cords with cord covers, tack them to the wall, or hide them under the rug. You’ll eliminate cord clutter, your room will look visually more appealing, and you’ll get rid of a potential safety hazard all at the same time.
2. Add Bright Colors to Your Office Space
No one is saying you have to spend thousands of dollars to repaint the entire office. That’s not the point of this exercise and it’s only one way to add more color to your space. Another option is to buy inexpensive yet colorful throw rugs, pillows, furniture, etc. and turn your dull, drab office into a wonderfully colorful place that people find inviting instead of depressing.
3. Change Up Your Lighting
Most offices are unfortunately plagued by ugly florescent lighting taking over their ceiling. You’re looking for the exact opposite effect, so you should think about adding task lighting to your office instead.
If you’re lucky enough, your office will get plenty of great natural light, so you won’t need to turn on the task lighting too often anyway. But when you and your employees are working late into the evening or well into the night, having halogen lamps at your disposal is definitely a good call.
4. Add Greenery to the Workplace
Do you know what really helps spruce up an office? Plants and lots of them! It doesn’t matter if you have tons of windows or just a few of them, because you need to fill your space with plants. This will add life, oxygen, and a beautiful feeling of connection with the earth. Plus, plants have a tendency to make darker spaces so much brighter, so they’ll really add to the ambience and atmosphere while breathing life into your office environment.
5. Buy Comfortable and Attractive Furniture on the Cheap
Buying furniture can create too much stress if you’re planning to pay top dollar from your local furniture outlet. Instead of buying brand-new, why not consider shopping around on Craigslist, eBay, and other discount or auction websites?
Believe it or not, you’ll have no trouble finding amazing, stylish, welcoming furniture on these sites. The best part is many people are practically trying to give away their furniture because they need it out of their hair for whatever reason. So gobble up this amazing furniture and get the deal of a lifetime by buying it used.
Of course, discount and auction websites aren’t the only places to find comfortable and attractive furniture that is also affordable. You’ll easily find a raft of websites selling office furniture that meets your budget.
Also, it’s worth keeping in mind you can use furniture marketed for other uses within your office space. For example, you’ll find bar furniture like stools that work well with certain styles of desks; just make sure you measure the height of your desks before buying some!
6. Make Sure Your Office Has Plenty of Great Art
You definitely need to add art to your office to help liven up the place, but it doesn’t need to be the most expensive and glamorous art from the most well-known artists. You’re most likely buying it to help brighten up the place, so make sure it’s colorful and add it to dark and dreary corners to help bring your office environment new life and a world of colors that wasn’t previously there before.
7. Whiteboards, Anyone?
Do you plan to add whiteboards to your office? Believe it or not, the physical versions of these boards can be especially expensive, yet they definitely do serve a great purpose. Many people like them for brainstorming ideas, posting upcoming projects, and much more.
Instead of buying expensive physical whiteboards, they actually sell whiteboard stickers. They aren’t exactly free, so you will have to spend a buck or two to get them, but they’re definitely a lot cheaper than physical boards. So it’s absolutely worth it to look into these stickers to see if they’ll meet your needs.
8. Buy Tasty Colorful Treats and Place Them Around the Office
Everybody loves candy and jellybeans, right? Do you know why so many people are attracted to them? Sure, they remember how great they taste and they can’t wait to dive in. But they also like them because of their bright, shiny, and attractive colors. So placing colorful treats around the office is a great way to brighten up the place and provide employees and clients with a tasty snack all at the same time.
9. Keep Your Office Clean
This may seem obvious, you but you’d be surprised how many businesses fail to keep their office clean. So, if your computers are a dusty mess and it looks like a hurricane has recently tore through your workplace, it’s time to either hire a cleaning service or buckle down and start cleaning and straightening up the place. You’ll love the way your office looks once you’re finished and you’ll feel good about the work environment on the whole.
Conclusion
You may not have believed it possible, but you now know it’s easy to design a cool office on the cheap. Please use these ninja design tips to your advantage and you’ll have no trouble making these exciting design transitions a reality.
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