How To Set Up An Office Space That’s Both Fun & Functional

Your office space is the heart and soul of your business: it’s where your team will meet, interact and get most of their work done. How it looks and feels has a massive impact on their mood and productivity, so you’ll want to optimise for these things. 

One of your first priorities will be filling your space with the things necessary to your work. Luckily, living in 2024 means you can get your office supplies on the internet. For instance, it’s now easier than ever to buy office printers online. 

If you’re in charge of a small business, there are a few extra considerations to keep in mind. First, you won’t have an unlimited budget, so you’ll need to get creative. You also probably won’t have a massive space to work with. 

If you’re a small business owner looking to create an office space that’s both fun and gets the job done, keep reading. In this article, we’ll outline a few key tips to do just that. 

Create Both Shared and Individual Spaces

Collaboration is key, especially for a business just getting off the ground. You’ll want your office space to include plenty of spaces where your team can meet, work together, share ideas, etc. There are quite a few ways to do this, which include creating informal breakout spaces, creating larger meeting places for company-wide events and using collaborative technology to your advantage.

However, you’ll also want to create places for members of your team to get their work done in silence. These can be traditional walled booths, individual offices for your more senior employees or designated quiet rooms. It’s also crucial to get the acoustics right: you’ll want to build your office in such a way that sound doesn’t travel throughout from any one place.

While owning a small business probably involves physical space limitations, it’s still crucial to strive to create a space where team members can both be alone and with each other. And alongside redesigning your office space, consider also taking this time as an opportunity to do a business reset. That way, your employees can fully embrace all their new environmental changes by ensuring that they coincide with some operational changes as well!

Use Colours to Your Advantage

An inexpensive way to improve your employees’ mood and maximise how much work gets done is to use colours to your advantage, and to do this, you’ll need to understand some psychology. It won’t surprise you to learn that the colours we see affect how we think and feel, and that different colours affect us differently. 

If you want to encourage creativity and productivity in a certain area, for instance, you can use plenty of green. For places that require a bit of intensity, use red (although, you probably shouldn’t paint a whole room red!). If you’re designing a rest area, blue is a good choice, as it soothes the mind and helps us recharge. 

Colour psychology goes beyond painting the walls a different colour. You’ll also want to play with light and shade, and include natural colour via plants. Anything that adds to the warm and welcoming ambience of your office space is guaranteed to be a pro, but also consider adding colourful elements that ensure your office environment stands out from the crowd and attracts industry talent. After all, anything that makes us different, makes us better.

Get Creative With Storage

If you have any experience owning or working at a company, you’ll know that it’s easy to let clutter pile up. As a new business owner, keeping your office neat and organised will be a challenge, but not an impossible one.

One storage tip is to add wall racks, which are especially helpful given a limited floor space. You can also buy versions of larger furniture like couches and tables with internal storage spaces. You’ll also want to give your employees a certain level of freedom when it comes to organising their own space, which includes giving them drawers, boxes and desktop organisers to work with. In other words, investing in smart and interactive storage solutions for your office won’t just boost the functionality of your office space, but can undoubtedly also provide opportunities for your staff to express themselves and really make their work environments feel personalised.

Start With the Essential Office Supplies

There are lots of things that would be nice to have in your office: after all, who doesn’t want a ping pong machine, a fully-equipped gym or a fancy coffee machine? However, you’ll need to take into account your space and financial restrictions. Not to mention that company culture is shaped more by the purpose or meaning behind your business rather than how many luxury amenities you can fit into your break room.

The best way to build an office space that’s enjoyable to be in is simply to make sure that your staff never have to worry about their base equipment needs not being met. This means that you’ll want to start with what’s truly essential, and then buy some nice-to-haves if you have some money and space left over. While what counts as ‘essential’ will differ slightly from business to business, there are a few that almost everyone needs, including printers, filing cabinets and tables and chairs. 

As mentioned, actually getting your office supplies into your office is easier than ever. You can do most of your shopping online, which is a massive time-saver. So don’t hesitate to place bulk orders to save big, and to also make sure that your staff always have access to the essentials they need. And yes, this also includes oat milk and coffee beans!

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Setting up your office space is one of the most exciting aspects of starting a new business. While there might be a million things you want to do, you’ll need to take into account a few early limitations and find creative solutions, like the ones you’ve just read. 

Wherever you are in the design process, the four points we’ve covered will almost certainly be relevant. We hope that this article has given you some tips you’ll be able to apply to your own office and shown you that it is possible to build a fun, functional space given the natural restraints of owning a small business.

 

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