What if instead of forcing yourself to work the way your office is laid out, you started 2023 by giving yourself the gift of creating an office space designed to work the way you naturally work best? When we design our lives and work based on the path of least resistance, success can become effortless. Ignite your inspirations and move into 2023 at full speed by creating a workspace that helps you reach that effortless state.
We’ve put together some of our top tips for creating a private (or executive) office designed to help you do your best work. Because we know that examples can fuel inspiration, we’re also sharing how Anna Kirk, NBF’s VP of Marketing, reimagined her office.
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Get inspired and shop the best spaces for 2023.
Start With An Assessment of the Way You Work
Personalized design starts with you. To create an office that will give you the biggest bang for its buck, start by assessing the way you work. These questions can help guide your process.
What do you need to do in this space?
Will you be meeting with colleagues? Do you need a collaboration space (and if so, do you want that to be at your primary desk, or would you be better served with a separate collaboration table)? Will your office be primarily used for deep focus work (and if so, what technology will you use to support it)? Is it important to you to incorporate active furniture like a standing desk or active stool in the space?
When do you do your best work?
Are you a morning person, an afternoon person, or a late-in-the-day person? Knowing the time of day when you do your best work will inform how you lay out your office. If you’re an afternoon person, for example, orienting your office to capture the morning light might not be the best for you. Instead, you want to pay attention to which part of your office feels the best at the time of the day when you do.
What makes you feel inspired?
Inspiration is the first step toward achievement. If you have the privilege of deciding how your office is designed, make sure to capture what makes you feel inspired and motivated. Is it a specific design style? Do you love to be surrounded by plants? Does a specific image or phrase inspire you? If so, could you put that somewhere within the sightline of your desk?
Play With Space Orientation
Allow yourself to forget the way the office has been laid out in the past. Give yourself the gift of a blank slate. Where are the windows? How do you want your desk oriented to the door? Sometimes all you need to reinvigorate your work is to reimagine the space.
Express Yourself Through Design
Embrace styles that represent who you are and how you work. Want to communicate an air of authority and stability? Nothing beats a warm, wood double pedestal executive desk (within 5 minutes, you’ll feel like a true titan of industry).
How Anna Kirk Reimagined Her Executive Office
When Anna Kirk came on board at NBF, she had the opportunity to reimagine her executive office. The space she’d inherited was perfectly functional and serviceable, featuring an L-shaped desk and tons of storage for paper filing. But it wasn’t designed to work the way Anna does.
“The first thing I saw was the beautiful windows,” Anna says. Her first decision was to rearrange the office so that her desk would look out the windows. This reorientation provided a more inspiring sightline from her desk, which is ideal for a marketing executive looking to cultivate new ideas and creative thinking.
Moving the desk also solved a second problem. In the original layout, the office faced away from the door, which Anna noted is against the principles of feng shui. By placing her desk in the middle of the office, she is able to work with her face toward the door.
Anna chose the Urban White Executive Desk. She liked it because “One simple rectangle says clean. There’s enough space to collaborate and enough space for paper.” She opted for Stol Task Chairs as seating for collaborators and a large magnetic whiteboard for pinning up ideas and jotting down inspiration because, as Anna says, “In marketing, you should fill spaces with ideas and thoughts.”
“Everyone deserves their own look and feel,” Anna says of her office revamp. If you’re embarking on your own office redesign project, Anna offers one simple suggestion. “Think about what kind of space inspires you.”
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