5 Easy Tips for Your Next Office Makeover
Is your office drab and boring? Here are a few simple things you can do to renovate your office without breaking the bank.
Was your last office renovation during the first Trudeau administration? Studies have shown that worker can be increased by revamping their work environment and replacing drab with warm and inviting, and boring and staid with colorful and cheerful. Just as importantly, many customers associate outdated offices with outdated, boring businesses.
Your office should be as inviting and as exciting as your business is. Renovating your office can pay real dividends by increasing worker satisfaction and productivity while projecting an aura of success to your customers. Here’s how to make it happen.
Light it up
Is your office a dull, flickering fluorescent hell? Lighten it up –literally – by replacing drab institutional fluorescent lighting with new energy efficient LED lighting. Modern LED lighting fixtures can accurately reproduce a wide variety of lighting profiles that mimic natural lighting, and have been proven to improve employee morale. Coincidentally, they can also pay for themselves in reduced electrical usage and extremely long service life.
Brighten it up
One of the cheapest improvements you can make is a fresh coat of paint. Drab offices can gain new life with a warm new paint job. Don’t be afraid to think out of the corporate box — white is great for hospitals, but office spaces can benefit more from a wider range of colors. A warm cinnamon or calming blue, a sunny yellow or subdued orange can do wonders to brighten up a work space. And don’t feel your entire office or building needs to be a consistent, single color. Try mixing-and-matching complementary colors to create visual interest and fight institutional monotony.
Things are looking up
Have you looked at your ceiling lately? Odds are you have the same drab, droopy ceiling tiles that were first installed when the building was constructed. Change them out for new ones. Tile manufacturers now offer a wide range of materials and colors, including many that are specially made to absorb or deflect sound, giving your workers a quieter, more peaceful work area.
Get floored
What condition are your office floors in? Is it wall-to-wall worn, dull carpet, or tired dull vinyl tiles? Now may be the perfect time to update it. There are a number of flooring options available, including carpeting that is installed as a series of independent, padded tiles, versus old-school rolled carpet and carpet padding. The best part about carpet tiles is that you can mix-and-match colors or patterns, as well as inexpensive replace just the worn or damaged individual tiles as needed.
Clothes make the man, and furniture makes the office
Nothing quite shows the age of an office like old, mismatched furniture. It’s fairly common in most offices to slowly accumulate a hodge-podge of mismatched desk, chairs, and filing cabinets as the years go by. Unfortunately, you may not notice the motley collection of furniture flotsam and jetsam cluttering your office – but you can rest assured that your customers do. A critical part of being successful is looking successful, and one way to do that is to freshen your office by periodically tossing out old furniture and replacing it with newer, more attractive furniture. You should also strive for a consistent look. For instance, you may have one certain type of chair and desk for managers, one certain type of chair and desk for line workers, and so on. The key is uniformity and consistency. If you want be professional, and be treated as a professional, your office needs to look the part of a modern, efficient office – not the back room of the local thrift shop.
Contact us for more tips on renovating your office to maximize employee satisfaction and productivity.
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