Using Design Psychology in your office increases both happiness and productivity. Here are some interior design tips on how to make your office a more pleasant and productive place:

Provide Friendly Lighting

Begin your office makeover with lighting, the number one design detail for happiness. Overly-bright overhead lighting can cause problems with eyestrain, headaches, and fatigue. You can install dimmers and add task lighting where needed to correct that situation.

Using home-style lamps lends a friendly atmosphere to an office space and improves productivity. Home-like table lamps provide a feeling of comfort, because our minds are accustomed to that type of lighting. Floor lamps are also another good supplemental light source, and have the added benefit of freeing up work space on desks.

Use iridescent blue colored light bulbs to cool the space in summer. Likewise, amber bulbs warm cold offices during cool weather.

Use Creative Colors on the Walls

Many colors effectively enhance creativity, including soft grays, warm tans, and silver blues. Because gray is the only color without an "after image" left in our brain, soft grays provide great backgrounds for in-depth thinking. Warm tans reinforced with far-horizon desert or beach paintings sustain concentration. Silver blues and cotton-candy pinks inspire fantasy, making these colors perfect for writers.

Overall efficiency can be improved by using sky and navy blues, black accents, and muted greens.

Decorative wall paint like glazing adds a greater sense of dimension to a room. The subtle striations in these finishes make the walls appear to recede.

Dress Your Office to Impress

If you're dressing your office to impress your clients, use over-scaled office furniture, welcoming home-style lighting, and large landscape paintings (to add a sense of visual depth). Combine those elements with tropical foliage to bring nature indoors, which relaxes you and your guests. Bookcases filled with books and closed files signify that you are knowledgeable and organized.

Consider how you want your guests to feel. If you want to look like an expert in your field, display your credentials. Relax guests with something unexpected that portrays your humility like a photo with you in a silly costume. If you have a known degree, don't intimidate your guests with cluttering framed degrees and lots of awards. Be selective with wall hangings, less is better for concentration on the important item in the space -- the people.

Using the techniques of Design Psychology can transform your office into a more productive and enjoyable space for yourself, employees, and clients.

(c) Copyright 2005 Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.