When selecting a floor for your office, it can be overwhelming with the myriad of paint, flooring and furniture fabric choices. This task is made harder when the person making the selection tries to perfectly match a color in the floor, to a color on the wall or in the furniture fabric. This is an impossible task, and one that only leads to frustration. There are a few lessons I have learned from designers over the years, that make this process much simpler.
1. Realize that you are not going to make everyone in your office happy. Some do not care about the design aspect, some do care but quietly reserve judgment. Others will say it is ok, but its not how they would have done it. Realize this going in, and focus on creating a pleasing environment and NOT pleasing the people in the environment.
2. Match color families NOT colors. I worked with a design legend in Waco Texas. She could design an entire office in 20 minutes, and it would look fantastic. She did this by sticking with color families not specific colors. If the floors were jewel tones, then the walls and fabrics were jewel tones. If the floors were pastels, then everything was pastels. The specific colors didn't matter, the color families go together naturally.
3. Find the focus of a space. Or put another way, what do you want to stand out? Some of the most dramatic spaces I have installed have a muted floor, fabric and walls. Save one, the feature wall. This is where a jewel tone wall can add drama to a space. But resist the urge to have a feature wall in every office. It gets lost if you are trying to make a statement in every room. Pick a prominent wall, but just one wall and give it a color from a different color family. This is a technique that will not be ignored.
4. And lastly: Always look at samples in your space. Natural light, or the lack of natural light affects color dramatically. Never pick colors in a show room.
Follow these 4 tips and not only will your design be solid, but hopefully your stress will remain low, and you might actually enjoy the process.
Thanks for reading:
Frank New
1. Realize that you are not going to make everyone in your office happy. Some do not care about the design aspect, some do care but quietly reserve judgment. Others will say it is ok, but its not how they would have done it. Realize this going in, and focus on creating a pleasing environment and NOT pleasing the people in the environment.
2. Match color families NOT colors. I worked with a design legend in Waco Texas. She could design an entire office in 20 minutes, and it would look fantastic. She did this by sticking with color families not specific colors. If the floors were jewel tones, then the walls and fabrics were jewel tones. If the floors were pastels, then everything was pastels. The specific colors didn't matter, the color families go together naturally.
3. Find the focus of a space. Or put another way, what do you want to stand out? Some of the most dramatic spaces I have installed have a muted floor, fabric and walls. Save one, the feature wall. This is where a jewel tone wall can add drama to a space. But resist the urge to have a feature wall in every office. It gets lost if you are trying to make a statement in every room. Pick a prominent wall, but just one wall and give it a color from a different color family. This is a technique that will not be ignored.
4. And lastly: Always look at samples in your space. Natural light, or the lack of natural light affects color dramatically. Never pick colors in a show room.
Follow these 4 tips and not only will your design be solid, but hopefully your stress will remain low, and you might actually enjoy the process.
Thanks for reading:
Frank New
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