Five Office Decorating Ideas Your Boss Will Love You For

You’re considered the most creative or ‘can do’ person in the office, so your boss has selected you with the special task of decorating the new office or redecorating the old. Turns out you’re also the busiest person in the office. It’s OK. Keep cool. I’ve got your back.

It’s much harder to decorate your own home than it is to decorate an office. At home, it’s all about pleasing your own eye and catering to your own personal taste. In an office, you’ve got consider a broader appeal – employees, clients, suppliers and other visiting stakeholders.

If you’re lucky, your office is well designed and either brand spanking new or has recently bounced back with a new lick of paint.

If you’re not so lucky, your spaces are odd, your surrounds are drab and the paint is starting to peel. The great news is, canvas art has an incredible ability to easily make old seem new again. It’s so easy to transform old to new and drab to bright.

It’s no secret that managers everywhere are shrewd with their finances, always trying to make their dollar stretch as far as possible. We’re all about making beautiful art accessible to everyone, so don’t be surprised if you go under budget or if you’re able to purchase more artwork than you ever dreamed of. We’re crafty like that!

Let’s get decorating! Here are our favourite office decorating ideas that will be pleasing to the eye, enhance productivity and drive morale.

Make your first impression count

Your office foyer, front reception or waiting room is more than just a place to greet and farewell visitors. They say first impressions count and a messy, uninspiring reception area with magazines from five years ago and a framed award from ten years ago can be a deal breaker.

When decorating a front reception area, think colour, think abstract and think innovation. It may be tempting to pop up a seaside or marine print, but that says ‘We’d rather be at the beach’ than ‘Let’s do business together’.

The employee staffing the front reception might think something relaxing, nostalgic or feminine would suit, but just because they like it doesn’t mean you should get it. And just because they don’t like it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! Unless your business is to relax customers (e.g. natural therapy clinic), the trick is to inspire confidence in today’s world rather than yearning for yesterday or someplace else to be.

An abstract art piece like this, below, offers colour (without being too crazy bright!) and shows confidence in its strokes and flow. It’s easy on the eye and makes for a great crowd pleaser, without being ho hum.

Encourage innovation in shared spaces

Boardrooms, meeting rooms and break out rooms – anywhere teams meet – are hubs for solving problems and brainstorming new ideas. Well, they’re meant to be! We all know that feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. That’s why, unless you’re in the business of travel, travel prints in meeting rooms are a no go!

They used to say:

Think outside the box

Now they say:

Don’t try to think outside the box. Understand there is no box.

But this one’s hilarious:

He’s good at thinking outside the box. Mostly, we prefer to keep him in the box.

New, modern ideas call for modern art. This piece, below, gets the balance right.

Gentle inspiration with strength, not sap

The options for striking, inspirational word art wall designs are endless, but it’s important to get the quotes right. The silly and the sentimental are perfect for sharing on your personal Facebook page, but they don’t really work in an office environment.

You may have wall upon wall of office space left to fill, but the tearoom or kitchen is actually an ideal place for an inspiration wall. Inspiration walls are designed to motivate employees, build culture and help boost morale, so it’s appropriate to place these in a staff only area. Outside of their own desks, employees spend most of their time in the kitchen so it makes complete sense to put something together here.

If you have a long wall, design a long, single, eye-level row of inspirational quotes. If you have a large squarish space, consider a 3 x 3 wall series of nine. They don’t have to be massive, a 40x40cm print works well.

You can hop onto our website and choose quotes that convey strength, fun or excitement. If you know your manager will expect you to justify your decisions, look at your organisation’s mission, vision and values and draw inspiration from there.

Lift your boss’s own spirits

Different interior design rules apply when decorating your big boss’s office compared to decorating an executive manager’s office. In theory, your big boss is likely to stick around for a while whereas an executive manager may be here today, gone tomorrow.

When decorating an executive manager’s office, keep the artwork more general. When decorating the big boss’s office, it’s time to get personal. Here, it’s all about making your manager happy and enabling them to build relationships with others by giving them a conversation piece – something to talk about with those who visit. Something that makes people realise they’re only human. And something inspiring to get them through the day.

So think about what they love or what they love to do. Given their propensity for risk taking, many high powered executives and entrepreneurs are into extreme sports. We have prints galore to accommodate this. Others may have a favourite place they like to travel, a passion for nature or a favourite hobby. Buy the print that speaks to them and gives them a reason to enjoy coming into the office each day.

It’s so exciting to be able to dress up a new office. Be sure to have some fun with it – at least you’re getting paid to do something different! You can also use indoor office plants to create a green office space.