Picture a plain workspace, with gray furniture, white walls, fluorescent lights and some office essentials, such as a desktop computer, pens and paper. Sounds kind of bleak when you picture it in your head, doesn’t it? Now imagine a home with beige furniture, white walls, beige carpeting or white linoleum floors, and basic home necessities and appliances. Sounds like a rather drab place to live, doesn’t it?
Without interior design, these places will be boring, uninspiring and even headache-inducing. Living and working in such environments can literally raise your stress levels. Your home will not feel like home–rather, it will feel like a place that you merely go to when you are not at work or hanging out with friends. In fact, if your home was that drab, then you would probably come up with any excuse possible to get out! The same is true for your workplace–being in such a gray, dismal place will make you feel like a slave rather than a productive employee that is being paid for his or her time. Interior designing will greatly improve both these places, and it can be done on any budget, from expensive to very cheap!
A coat of fresh paint is an inexpensive way to make a huge change in an office or home. Blue, green and warm brown tones can induce a sense of calm and focus in the office, or in living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms. Yellows and creams work well in sunny bathrooms, and the kitchen can be anything you like! Adding long-life, inexpensive plants such as pothos ivy, spider plants, corn plants, vines, ferns and other hardy species will add pops of greens to your spaces. It has also been medically proven that having plants in the home and office can improve the quality of the space so much that your stress levels drop dramatically. Even fake plants do the job–just remember to dust them periodically!
Adding small touches such as the use of colorful storage containers and artwork or photographs to the walls will complete your office or home makeover. These spaces will now appear very welcoming, inspiring and comfortable–and you will feel much less stressed. Interior design is not as complicated as many people make it out to be. It can be, if you wish, but it can also be simple, straightforward and inexpensive to create a wonderful space for yourself, your family or your officemates.
