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Home offices, arguably the pride, and joy for a lot of us remote workers. After all, what better way of saying suck it to procrastination than by having your own home office set up. That being said for a lot of us, our home offices are in the smallest rooms we have ( myself included) so are there any space-saving tips to make your home office look bigger?
Investing in items that take up less room, sticking with one theme, and using mirrors effectively will all make a small home office space look bigger. Consider clearing your office regularly and avoid putting items on the floor to make the most out of the space that you have available.
So which of these tips are the most effective? And is there anything that you can do today to make your home office look bigger? Let’s explore these tips below
(Just a heads up a lot of people reading my blog are in the process of designing their own home office. If you want to save some of the painstaking time I did in designing my office, you can find my recommended products here)
Use items that don’t take as much space
Let’s face it, this is probably the single biggest thing you can do today to directly help with making your home office look bigger.
Whilst a lot of us want to get the best quality items that go the extra mile for our comfort, these items often take the most amount of room.
If you’re working from small bedrooms or cloakrooms then one of the first things we are going to need to do is use items that don’t take as much room.
Now possibly the most common items that will be taking the most amount of space in your home office will be your desk and chair.
To give you an example before I moved flats my old office tabletop was 150cm. I knew moving here I would have to get something that was smaller and so invested in a tabletop that was only 120cm saving myself some valuable space.
The same goes for office chairs whose legs can spread quite wide depending on the number of wheels or the design. Investing then in office chairs that don’t have armrests and that can be easily put away can massively save on office space.
To help, I’ve put together a comparison of smaller office chairs and desks below which help with saving space:
| Brand | Chair Size |
| Flash Furniture | 25.5 x 24.5 x 41.25 inches |
| Furmax | 19.8 x 19.8 x 42 inches |
| Amazon Basics | 24 x 19.25 x 38.25 inches |
And for office desks:
| Brand | Desk Size |
| Flexispot | 48 x 30 inches |
| Calico | 23 x 32 inches |
| Jarvis | 60 x 30 inches |
Use a sit-stand desk
So traditionally I’ve always had mixed feelings about sit-stand desks.
Mainly because I felt that more often than not, the benefits of standing whilst working weren’t fully utilized with a lot of us just using them to sit down and work from.
If you are tight on space however these do have a nice bonus benefit.
Mainly being that if you work from standing up, you have a lot more storage space underneath your standing desk.
This can be the perfect spot not only to keep your cables but also put things like small file cabinets, storage boxes or even household items (hello homemade pantry)
By using the space underneath your standing desk for storage you’re also much more likely to use them to stand up and work giving you the added health benefits of standing while working.
So what are my recommendations for a sit-stand desk – luckily I’ve done the research and compared a fair few of the best selling standing desks on the market- you can find my choice on my recommended gear page here.
Use mirrors effectively
So one of the major benefits of working from home is that you have added the benefit of watching a lot more daytime tv/home makeover programs than you thought possible.
One of the tips then that I’ve picked up from the likes of homes under the hammer is that mirrors make for larger-looking space.
Mirrors if angled correctly can help add depth to your room. For example, let’s say if your office space is 10ft x 10ft – no the biggest space right?
Well if you place your mirrors at the end of your room (granted you should avoid this if there is a window on the far side of your room) It can make your room look double the size.
Hopefully, the image below will help:
Mirrors can also help add light to your room so if you do have an office that has no windows in it, the lights in your room will bounce off these mirrors giving you a sense of added light and airiness to your room.
Consider background lighting
Another added tip to help add depth, character, and most importantly space to your office is to add background light to some of the essential items in your office.
I found that this works particularly well behind things like your monitors or around window sills.
This will help give your office space stand-out areas to focus in on giving further depth to your office and the illusion of more space.
The most common areas then you should consider adding background lighting include:
- Behind your computer monitors
- Underneath your desk
- Around your skirting board
- Around your window frame
- Behind or on each shelf
This added light will give your office space a much more dramatic and appealing look which makes the most out of the space you have.
So what lights should you do this with? After all certain lights such as tube lighting or LED Boxes can cost hundreds of dollars.
The best option I found to do this is LED strip lights which also have the added benefits of coming in multiple colors – You can find out more about these here.
Paint Your room light blue
Did you know that the color you paint your office can directly affect things like mood, focus, and productivity?
A study by the University of Texas found that people who have a light blue/green office space were more focused and productive than employees who had a white office space.
Now that being said offices that are lighter in color always seem larger than offices that are darker, I mean thing about a room that you have gone into in the past that was painted entirely in black? Hard to make out the shape of things right?
Painting your room or some of the highlights in your room a light shade of blue will not only help keep you productive, which can be a challenge when working from home, but also give your home office the appearance of being larger.
Consider vertical furniture
The biggest problem we have in a small home office is floor space.
Any of you that have been working from home for a few years understand just how quickly floor space gets eaten up by either bulky furniture or random bits and pieces from around your home.
This is especially true in apartments or flats which are already limited on space.
A fantastic option to get around this would be to invest in furniture that is more vertical than horizontal – Furniture that is taller thane it is wider!
This will allow you to organize your office space without taking up too much floor space giving your office the appearance of a larger space – which could be eaten up by things like large shelving units or other storage types.
For me, there is no better option if you are tight on space than a File cabinet, and more specifically a file cabinet that has three to four storage boxes inside it.
I’ve actually written a few posts on file cabinets you can check out below or check out my recommend storage items here.
Invest in a light rug
Whilst laminate flooring would definitely be my first option, I would definitely consider adding a light-colored rug to help further emphasize your office space
Whilst you might think this is adding unnecessary clutter adding a small rug as the centerpiece of your office if you have room can really help distract from the space.
Word to the wise though you’re going to want to avoid things like heavy patterns or dark colors which can have the opposite effects so sadly afghan and Persian rugs might be out of the equation.
Also if your office space is something ridiculously small like 2m x 2m then This option might be too small even for you.
Reduce your patterns
Even in the largest of rooms patterns can be distracting.
After all, we’ve all been to people houses who have some questionable decor choices (zebra print sofa covers I’m looking at you)
One of the things you will want to do then if you are light on space in your office is to avoid a lot of patterns.
You see patterns work well as a way to break up space giving your eyes areas to help focus on.
In a smaller office space, this will be limited and will often make your space look cramped and cluttered.
Busy patterns on things like curtains or desk covers are also quite hard to match to a particular theme and can definitely stand out like a sore thumb so try to avoid if you are light on space.
Keep your floor clean
We’ve covered the importance of floor space today with it being super easy for random items like suitcases, vacuum cleaners, and other household items to creep into your home office space.
While you might think cramming these items in your office space won’t take away from your space the truth is that it’s super easy for these to make your home office look cluttered and smaller than they need to be.
Anyone who has had to decorate in the past, and move all their furniture out of their rooms, knows just how big rooms can look when you keep your room tidy so ensure that you keep your floor as clean as possible.
A rule I like to follow is the three-item rule whereby if I have more than three items covering my floor then I know my office needs a clean.
Consider investing in plants
Any long-term readers of my blog know just how much I love office plants (Bonsai Trees FTW) not only do they give a welcome break from most traditional and bland-looking offices they also have a myriad of health benefits such as helping you relax, boosting focus, and productivity.
So how is having an office plant going to make your office space look bigger?
Office plants when placed correctly can help break your small home office into sections helping break up some of the hard lines, giving rise to a larger space.
This works particularly well when used in window sills or behind your monitors, think of placing them in similar palaces we talked about the background lighting.
I would, however, avoid a few places for plants in a small office, hanging plants, for example, can make a low ceiling look even shorter and I would also consider avoiding any large plants that are larger than one meter if you are particularly tight on space.
If you are interested in reading what I think are the best plants that work for any home office large or small, you can check out my recommended plants here.
Stick with one theme
One of the major side effects of having an overly cluttered and small office is that any theme you might have tried to build up will get lost.
It’s super important then that you try to stick to one theme that works for you.
To come up with a good home office theme consider asking yourself the following questions:
- What color do you want your office to look like
- Do you want your office to seem modern or old
- What items will you need that best match your office
- What, movie or TV show have you seen that has an office you would want
I would also have a look at Pinterest which has thousands of fantastic small office ideas or check out my post on home office ideas that I rethink will work well.
Having one theme will be much more visually pleasing, making your office appear much larger without having to worry about your items causing massive distractions that are unpleasant to the eye.
Clean your office regularly
One of the easiest ways to make your home office look bigger is to simply clean your office regularly.
Dirt and grime get built up fairly quickly affecting the appearance of your office space – making it look worse off cluttered and much smaller than it should.
Cleaning your furniture, monitors, carpets, and other items that are dusk magnets then can go a long way in not only having a nice workspace to work from but giving the appearance of a much larger office
If you are interested in learning specifically how to clean up your office space check out my blog post below:
Come up with a better blueprint
Whilst a lot of us were thrust into the world of remote working and setting up home offices one of the biggest mistakes we have made (myself included) is not coming up with a blueprint before hands.
Using something then like an online interior design platform or a pen and paper to measure out the size of your office and planning where your items will be will avoid you buying bulking items that take up more room than you might have anticipated.
To use these, simply put in the dimensions of your room and get an idea of the best space for your office.
Invest in shades instead of curtains
One of the big things that a lot of us don’t consider about saving space in our home offices is all the small items that take up a lot of room that you might not have anticipated.
One of the most common items to do this is curtains which can cover an entire wall in some offices.
A nice space-saving option then would be to replace the curtains in your office with blinds which typically take up a lot less room than curtains.
Use space-saving shelves
Sadly, one of the luxurious ones of us with small offices don’t have ample room for storage space.
Whilst we might want to have a floor-to-ceiling shelf or loads of cabinets to store our items the truth is we simply just don’t have the floor space to store items meaning our offices easily get cluttered and filled up.
One solution then I fount to this tricky problem is to invest in space-saving furniture.
For example, door shelves ( link takes you to Amazon) are a fantastic option that sits comfortably on the back of your door giving you bonus storage without having to worry about taking up too much space.
You might also want to consider looking at ottoman footstools which have built-in storage or desks with draws to ensure that you get the most out of the space you have available to you.
Organize your cables
With the leaps and bounds that technology has grown by in the past two decades, gone are the years of a lot of paper waste.
That being said tech, and even wireless tech still has one major downside.
Excess cables!
One of the best things to do then to avoid making your office look smaller is to group your cables together to save space.
Cable ties ( link takes you to Amazon) typically work best for this.
This works particularly well for places like behind your monitors where cables can cause a genuine nuisance.
Doing this will free up a lot of your space making your work environment a lot less cluttered.
Bonus Tip – Put your desk against a wall
So a lot of you reading this will know this one already but there might be some of you out there who have done this ( if so… why?!)
Despite being at the center of our home offices it’s important to ensure that any desk you have is pressed up against a wall as opposed to in the middle of your room.
If you do leave your desk in the middle of your room it will lead to a lot of dead space which is going to draw your attention making your room look like someone just plonked a desk in the middle of it.
Avoid at all costs!
Finally, a lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.
This blog post was written by Fehed Nicass who has 3 years of experience working from home and well over ten years of experience working in sales.