15 stylish ways to spruce up your home office workspace

Thought of redecorating your work desk or home office? Our working spaces should ideally inspire us creatively and motivate us to do our best.

But more often than not, as we get caught up with work, they become messy and disorganised, and we end up looking for other spaces to work from such as the sofa or bed.

If you need some fresh ideas to create the workspace of your dreams, here are 15 quick and easy office décor tips to ramp up the style factor at work or at home.

1. Decorate your wall

If you are staring at a blank wall while typing away on your laptop, why not brighten it up with some art?

Besides hanging photos of your loved ones, beautiful framed prints or inspiring motivational quotes, you can also get creative and cut out shapes from a sheet of cork to create your own pattern as seen in the photo above.

2.Use a storage cart

If you only have space for a simple desk at home, use a three-tiered trolley cart for some extra storage space. You can put anything on it—stationery, documents, books, snacks and even plants.  Not only does it help to keep your space tidy, a neatly organised cart can also look aesthetically pleasing and add to the decor.

Plus, if you ever feel like working from a different part of the house, you can just easily move the cart with everything that you need.

3. Choose a patterned rug

Another quick way to jazz up your home office area is to place a rug with a fun and unique pattern. Not only does it help to keep things visually interesting in the space, it can also help to protect your flooring from the office chair wheels.

Choose rugs that are easy to maintain such as low-pile rugs, which has flatter and smoother surfaces and are easy to vacuum and clean.

4. Put your favourite snacks in jars

Think of all the snacks that make you happy. It could be your favourite type of candy, nuts, or dried fruit. It could also be oatmeal or cereal for those mornings you oversleep and miss breakfast.

All you have to to do is grab a couple of cheap mason jars from Daiso or Ikea and fill them up with nosh. Bonus points if they stack nicely, making your desk look extra organised.

5. Get organised with wooden trays

Most people put their stationeries into a mug, a drawer, or a pencil case. Step up your organisation game with compartmentalised or segmented wooden trays for some instant class.

Use one segment for your mug, another for post-its, and another for stationery that you use often, so it doesn’t sit there forever gathering dust.

The setup will look even better if you can get a mug or cup in a natural material like ceramic or metal to complement the wood.

Get these wooden trays for cheap from Daiso, and slather on a coat of varnish if you don’t mind doing a bit of DIY to make it look nicer.

6. Remember to add a screensaver

You’d be surprised how much your screensaver can add to the aesthetic of your office space.

Rather than leaving your windows open, use a picture that captivates you or download a screensaver to show a retro flip clock on your screen.

7. Buy a mouse pad to add to the aesthetic

We’re aware that mouses these days work just fine on a regular desk. But hey, mouse pads can look really pretty and help unify the colour scheme or theme you have going on.

8. Use dried flowers for a pop of colour

Contrary to what you may think, dead flowers can bring life to your desk. While you can repurpose old bouquets and put them in vases to make them look good, we suggest you buy dried flowers from florists who intentionally sell them that way.

Dried flower bouquets are usually made with the right flowers that dry well without falling apart. Sometimes they include branches of cotton or sprigs of wheat – stuff that doesn’t look as nice in a fresh bouquet.

We suggest you try online sites like Dawn Q or Bloom Room for your floral fix.

9. Put little things that make you happy on a cork board

Corkboards are not a very new idea when it comes to decorating your desk. But we think what make corkboards stand out are how you use things that inspire you and lift your mood.

Everyone has different sets of colours that appeal to them and put them at ease. Pick out your favourite colour combination and matching photos from this amazing website called Design Seeds and print them out for keeps.

Old brooches or little pins can add a bit of bling, while magazine cutouts of your favourite things can help inspire you. Don’t be afraid to pin up ribbons, stickers, or whatever little trinkets call your name. This is your space.

Buy cheap corkboards from Daiso if you want small ones, and big corkboards from Mustafa or Popular Bookstore.

10. Alternatively, use pegboards

If corkboards are too common for your taste, pegboards are a creative, carpenter-esque way to organise your stuff. They’re actually meant to hang tools. By putting the pegs in the right places, the board can hold up tools of any shape.

As for the casual user, pegboards can be used to display photos, hang up trinkets like old necklaces, or if you wanna step it up, you can even use a shelf to showcase stuff.

But you’d need to drill holes into a mini shelf so you can insert peg hooks into it before mounting it up.

11. Or go minimalist with a grid board

Grid boards are a lot more versatile and minimalist. Not to mention how easy it is to bring one to work, since it’s so light.

They’re versatile as you can hang additional hooks on them to display bigger and clunkier items like your headphones, scissors or scotch tape. The large spaces in the grid also mean you can hang up air plants (nifty little plants that don’t need soil, just a spray of water once in a while).

The only catch is you’ll probably need to mount the grid up on a wall with hooks, which you may not be able to if you’re in a cubicle with short wall dividers.

12. For a fuss-free option, use old clip boards

If you don’t want to spend so much time doing DIY stuff with grid boards, peg boards, and what not, keep it simple with three things. An old clipboard, pictures, and masking tape.

To make it look more put-together, use neutral colours like beige, white or black, (instead of bright red, navy or pine green).

Try to pick pictures that all match a similar colour scheme; same goes for the knick-knacks you keep in the area. See how this picture primarily sticks to the colours of brown, black and white? If you keep to one colour scheme it immediately makes everything look more refined.

13. Mask that ordinary chair with a throw

One of the things that you can’t really change is your office chair. You can plump it up with cushions but that isn’t going to hide how it looks.

Get a throw, a big colourful jacket or even a simple rug to put over your chair.

14. Find a lamp that will lighten your mood

Okay, we know that your office is probably already well-lit. But a lamp doesn’t necessarily need to be used to brighten the area.

It could be used to add a bit of warm lighting to add a touch of homeliness to your desk (especially if your office is filled with blue-ish fluorescent lights).

The trick is to find a lamp that has soft lighting which adds a glow to your area without being too bright so as to make your desk stick out.

15. Buy the plants that won't die on you so quickly

Succulents are one of the hardiest desk plants you can keep, other than cacti and air plants, meaning you don’t need to worry about how to get rid of pests, infestations, etc.

They need to be watered once in five days (at most), while some varieties can go a month without any water.

The only thing you don’t want to do is water one too frequently, as that would cause the leaves to swell with water, grow mushy, and drop off (ew). So trust us when we say they’re really low maintenance. Just water when they get a little ‘crispy’ and dry.

This article was first published in Her World Online.