Office furniture has come a long way over recent years. In the past, the selection of items on offer was relatively limited. In contrast, today there is now a wealth of products available, allowing you to be much choosier when you’re fitting out your workspace with desks, chairs and other objects.
Like the furniture in our homes, office furniture should be reflective of your company’s personality, image and brand. For example, contemporary, vibrant and fashionable office furniture is likely to ‘work well’ in a trendy, new creative agency. Alternatively, if you want to highlight your firm’s traditional, professional approach, more conventional furnishings may be more suitable. Leather chairs and wooden desks lend themselves particularly well to this image.
When selecting furniture it is also important to ensure it is comfortable and practical. Spending eight hours or more a day sat on an uncomfortable chair, with a laptop balancing precariously on a worktop that’s small, unstable and cluttered, is hardly conductive with productiveness. It’s long been established that the right office furniture plays a central role in boosting employee productivity.
Offices are natural generators of hordes and hordes of paperwork and as a consequence require somewhere to store massing amounts of filing. When choosing office furniture it is therefore important to consider storage. For example, a desk with drawers attached might be preferable to a desk without any storage.
Consider the shades of your furnishings carefully too. Ideally, you should select items that showcase your corporate colours. This will help to drive home your brand message and leave people in no doubt as to which firm’s offices they are in.
It’s especially important to use your official colours in your reception area, as this is the first thing visitors see when they enter your premises. Fortunately, it’s now easy to buy reception seating and desks in a whole host of colours, so you should be able to find the ideal versions for your office.
Different types of lighting can also enhance your corporate branding and choices of colours. Layers of soft warm light can complement the fresh palettes of natural hues, highlighting textures and the rich walnut timbers. Alternatively, a combination of spotlights can be used to highlight specific furniture pieces or oversize industrial-sized pendants to provide ambient and accent lighting. Lighting controls can also provide different lighting scenes for the spaces.
Remember to bear in mind if your office does not have many windows and is absent of natural light, lighting can play an important role in creating a comfortable, light and spacious environment. Linking artificial lighting cleverly with the natural daylight can ensure optimum lighting conditions whilst minimising energy consumption.
With health, well-being and productivity now big considerations for workplace lighting, it is important to get the balance right for your employees. Intense blue-rich light in the morning or at times when you want people to be alert, and warmer, softer light in the afternoon and evening when things are winding down. This mimics the change in the characteristics of sunlight through the day and makes sure our body clocks keep ticking at the right speed. In settings where people are working, learning, or undergoing medical treatment, this is essential.
Finding furniture & lighting that reflect your brand may take a little extra time and effort, but it’s well worth it.
Contact us today to view our full portfolio of furnishings.
