The article is developed in partnership with BetterHelp.
Do you work in a dim corner of your room, an un-personalized office, or just on your couch?
With more people working from home every day, making sure your workspace is customized for your own productivity, comfort, and tranquility is very important. A few simple interior design choices can help you transform your workspace from boring and stressful, to productive and calming quickly and easily. By taking into consideration your lighting, decoration, sound, and spacing, you can create an environment where you can do your best work with minimal work stress.
1. Lighting
The lighting you choose for your work space can have a significant effect on the mood of the area as well as your productivity. By carefully selecting your lighting based on factors such as temperature, color, and intensity, you can alter your ability to focus, your relaxation, and the ambiance of your work space.
Light temperature is dependent on its position on the Correlated Color Temperature Scale. Within this scale, measured in Kelvins, the color of light we see correlates to its temperature in Kelvins.
Light ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 Kelvins is considered warm while light ranging from 3,100 to 4,500 Kelvins is considered cool. Warm light can give you a relaxing, cozier ambience. Alternatively, cool light can give your work space a more energized feeling.
By integrating different kinds of light into your space, you change the energy of the room. For example, when you’re looking to focus in a more invigorating environment, you can use cool lighting to brighten up the room. On the other hand, maybe you’re stressed out and need calm. Warm light can provide a more relaxing environment.
2. Greenery and Decoration
Whether you are working in an office or from home, your work space may feel gray, boring, and downright unappealing. When your work space lacks any sort of ornament or personality, it can make working feel like a downer. Customizing your workspace with some easy to care for houseplants can help it feel more tranquil. In fact, interaction with plants can help reduce stress.
3. Sound
When you are working at home or in your own office, it can be helpful to play calming music or sounds while you work. This may be classical music, rain sounds, or even just white noise. Gentle music without lyrics can be great for de-stressing and relaxing. Make your stress-free playlist and leave it on in the background to help pass the time and create a calm environment while you work.
4. Separation
If you are working from home, it can be especially important but difficult to separate your work space from your life space. No matter what size space you are working with, there are plenty of ways you can separate your work space from your regular life space and thus, separate the stress of work from the relaxation of your home.
Setting up an office space is an ideal way to prevent the stress of your work space from seeping into your home space. You don’t have to have a separate room to designate space for your work. You can set up a desk in the corner of your room and keep all of your work supplies over there.
Better yet, you can use your lighting, as discussed earlier, to transform a room from work time to relaxation time. Say you have a desk in your bedroom. Using cool light while working and warm light while relaxing can help you separate your work time and space from your regular living time and space and keep your home stress-free when working from home.
