Tips for Adding Personal Touches to Home Office Decor

Home office decor is one of those things that many people tend to overlook, particularly when they are first setting up their space. Ironically, however, it may be even more important to decorate these areas than it is to add certain elements to regular office space. The decor can help people differentiate their workspace from the rest of the home. 

This ability to mentally understand that you’re entering a work area is key to the success of a modern home office. People who aren’t able to make that shift in their head a lot of times end up in places such as WeWork. It’s just too hard for them to concentrate on the task at hand while having so many distractions around them. 

Knowing this, we’ve put together some of the best tips on how to decorate a home office. It’s not just about a cute desk setup, although that can certainly help. There are different elements that go into a proper home office design layout that can be the difference between staying at home or having to rent a room elsewhere to be able to work efficiently.

Reflecting Your Personality through Decor Choices

Many times, when these types of topics come up in other articles or even in conversations with friends, what we get is a bunch of general ideas of what might work. As mentioned, though, one of the key elements to figuring out how to decorate a home office revolves around making it a personal space.

Most people who have worked in regular offices their whole lives have never really had a say in how their workplace looked or what it featured. Therefore, trying to figure out what they actually like can be more of a challenge than they expected. Sometimes, the best home office ideas come about by figuring out what you don’t like first.

Is the chair that you’ve been sitting in for years comfortable enough for you? Plenty of people would say no, and that is why an ergonomic chair is one of the first things that they look for when they get a chance to pick where they’ll sit. Don’t worry; our home office organization ideas don’t stop here.

Identifying Your Style and Preferences

It’s a good idea to make sure that the ideas for home office decor that you come up with match your personality, as we stated. We can’t lose sight of the fact, however, that this spot will be within your home. Therefore, you may want to stick to the sense of style that the house already features. Otherwise, the area could look too far out of whack! 

If you have very traditional-looking, rustic furniture within the home already, then a wood desk setup could fit right in. Some of the office accessories that you choose should probably fall in line with that vibe as well.

There are, of course, some people who want to make sure their office area looks and feels completely different from the rest of the house. If you can put the adjustable height desk that you’re going to use on a daily basis in a separate room, that can actually help make the area unique. You may be able to add a pink desk setup in that room without thinking about the rest of the home decor since it’s a completely separate room.

Choosing Decor Elements that Resonate with You

Old offices, particularly for lawyers or hotshot teachers, usually featured a wooden bookshelf - Doctors were victims of this one-size-fits-all workplace design idea as well. In this day and age, however, who’s really going to open a book to check on something? There’s probably a digital version of the book where you can access that information much quicker.

This means that regardless of what your line of work is, you could potentially opt for a minimalist home office design. Having fewer elements within that space is going to make it much easier to keep the area clean. Many people also mention that working in less cluttered areas allows them to think more clearly.

Maybe some of these ideas about decor aren’t necessarily ones that resonate with you. Plenty of professionals still like that their workspaces have a bit of a traditional look and feel. Our point here, though, is that all of these design concepts could seemingly be on the table for you.

Showcasing Hobbies and Interests

Some people can be a bit shy about showing their personality in their decor within a public place, such as a regular office space. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to hold back a bit with certain elements when working in these places. You just never know how people in the company could react to some of your preferences. 

Let’s be honest about this as well: many companies are very afraid of other people feeling “offended” by the fact that their co-worker hung up a banner of their favorite team or band. This is your space now, however, and you can do whatever you want with it! 

If you have a signed picture of the moment that your team won the Super Bowl and you never knew where to put it, your home office may be the best spot. Maybe you have a bean bag chair that’s shaped like a basketball, and it’s been sitting in your garage for years. It could be time to put it to good use.     

Incorporating Hobbies into Decor

You may not have that picture that we talked about earlier, but you’ve been thinking about finally buying something from those sports memorabilia stores at the mall. That Tiger Woods picture from when he won the Masters with a hole-out shot? Any golfer would love to have that moment plastered on their walls. 

People can have all sorts of hobbies that they may not even be as vocal about. One of the best ways to be able to create this unique space where you can get in the right headspace to get your job done is to put things in that area that you like to look at.

Creating a Gallery Wall of Memories

Work can get tough some days, and it’s especially on those days when having some type of personal detail near your desk can make all the difference. You don’t have to fill the whole wall with family memories if you don’t want to. Having one or two memories, though, that you can look at on these days can really help you pull through. 

Another idea that many people are leaning towards these days is vision boards. It may not be memories that you want to hang up on the wall, but visions of the place where you want to get to someday. These pictures can also help you maintain your focus and perspective on things. 

You may not be where you want to be right now, but it’s part of the journey to get to where you’re dreaming of going. Some people may get the sense that home office wall decor is a bit corny, especially if you’re adding vision boards or motivational phrases. All that we can say is that you really never know when they can come in handy on a bad day.

Personalized Workstation Setup

This is something that we’ve touched upon already, but it may very well be the biggest reason to have a home office in the first place. If you go to a place like WeWork, you may not have enough space to place your ergonomic office chair and your sit/stand desk. Another thing that’s important is having enough space to place the right size monitor that you need to do your work properly. 

It’s not just gamers and day traders that are going to be able to benefit from a multi-monitor setup on a desk. Maybe you still do a lot of work on blueprints and other design plans by hand. If that’s the case, you’re going to benefit greatly from a large L-shaped desk.

Crafting the right home office design layout that contemplates all of the home office accessories that you want to add to the area is key. The space that you’ll have is probably not unlimited, so make sure that you can fit what’s essential to your needs.     

Selecting Personalized Desk Accessories

Did you ever wish that you could add better quality speakers to your work computer setup? Some people can really benefit from music playing in the background as they work. It’s just not the same feeling, though, when that music is coming from low-quality speakers that were made in the 90s. 

Multiple monitors may not be what you’re looking for in your home office desk setup. If you could buy a gadget to be able to move the monitor that you do have around, that would help you out. It’s important to keep in mind that not all of these gadgets are going to take up space; some may actually help you get the most out of the room that you do have.

Creating a Comfortable Seating Area with Your Ergonomic Chair

Getting an ergonomic chair is very much a must at this point in time. There aren’t too many good reasons to go out and buy a seating option that’s going to be detrimental to your back. Apart from picking the right chair, though, you want to make sure that you leave enough room within your workspace for the chair to fit.  

When you’re drawing up plans for the area, you’ll likely want to avoid pinning yourself within a chair against a wall. That’s going to limit the benefits that you can potentially obtain from an ergonomic chair. If you get a seating option that allows you to lean back while your spine remains perfectly aligned, but you can’t lean back because you’re up against a window, that’s a bit of a letdown. 

It could be a good idea to actually take some time to figure out what part of your back hurts the most before buying any of these options. The truth is that all of the chairs out there offer “amazing” support, but not everyone benefits from the same type of support. That could be a key element in the buying process.

Rotating Seasonal Decor to Keep Things Fresh

If you really want to go the extra mile, this can certainly help you spice things up. The sad reality of the perfect home office setup is that the initial excitement that you get when you find and put all of the elements in the right place ultimately wears off. You could find yourself in a place where it feels like it’s the same old routine every single day.

To shake that idea off a bit, what you could do is add some seasonal decorations to the area. Maybe some of the wall decorations change during the holidays or into the spring. In fact, some of the changes that you make don’t have to be tied to holidays for everyone.

Let’s say that things get really busy for you around tax season. Maybe during those days, you’re going to need to add the Rocky poster on the wall to remind you to keep going. The good thing about simple decor elements is that they can be interchangeable, and that comes in handy during these moments.

Final Thoughts

It’s pretty evident that not all of these tips are going to be a perfect fit for specific situations. That’s bound to happen when these ideas are meant to help people add “personal” touches to a particular space. Hopefully some of these ideas allow each person to craft their own version of a perfect home office. 

The idea behind this entire piece is to provide thought-starters that could get the ball rolling for readers. From these ideas, you’ll be able to craft those personalized solutions. The ergonomic chair example that was recently mentioned is the perfect model for this concept. 

These chairs are obviously meant to help people who have to remain seated for extended periods do so comfortably. That doesn’t mean that each and every chair that claims to be ergonomic will benefit everyone equally. It’s essential to find the chair or the solution that works best in your specific situation!