Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Home Office Makeover Ideas

Home offices can easily look dull or unappealing.


It can be hard to find the appropriate space in your home for a home office. Instead of commandeering a section of your living room or bedroom for this purpose, consider your home's unused areas. Experiment with placing your home office in such spaces as an underutilized closet, underneath a flight of stairs, or in a bare hallway. Reuse existing furniture, such as armoires, bookshelves, or linen cabinets as home office storage. Does this Spark an idea?


Wallpaper


Home offices can easily appear cluttered or unsightly. Define your home office space by lining its walls with eye-catching wallpaper. Since home office areas tend to be small, wallpapering this area shouldn't be expensive. If your office occupies an alcove, cover its inner walls. If your office is part of another room, outline its borders with chair rail and paper within these boundaries. You can also define your home office's boundaries with room dividers, such as shelving units, free-standing screens, or heavy drapes.


Redo Your Desk


Your desk sets the tone for the rest of your home office. If you don't like the look of your desk, make it over. Spray paint metal desks to take them from dull and colorless to bewitching. The most pedestrian of metal desks becomes chic when painted bronze, azure, cherry red, or pale pink. You can repaint wooden desks as well. Create contrast by painting your desk's legs and top in harmonizing shades, such as black and butter yellow, or sea green and chocolate. Embellish your desk by lining its edges and corners with heavy ribbon or wood scalloping.


Create a brand new desk for very little by placing an old door or deep shelf over two short filing cabinets. Coordinate these components by painting them in a uniform shade.


Update Filing Cabinets


Like desks, metal or wood filing cabinets can be updated with spray paint. You can also improve desks by recovering drawer faces. Clean out drawers and remove them from their filing unit. Unscrew their handles and cover their faces with durable decorative fabric or moisture-proof shelf liner. Don't be afraid to use vivid prints or intense, shiny materials. Since drawer faces cover a relatively small area, they offer a perfect canvas for experimentation.


Revamp Your Bulletin Board


Standard bulletin boards can make home offices appear cheap, chaotic, and depressingly industrial. Get rid of this impression by revamping your bulletin board. First, throw away any useless or outdated items that you may have tacked to it. Remove the items you've decided to keep and set them aside, along with any remaining push pins. Take apart your bulletin board. Recover its backing in a porous fabric, such as a canvas batik print or an earth-toned burlap. You can also use heavy, attractively textured paper for this purpose. Repaint your bulletin board's frame in a coordinating tone, or decoupage it with vintage postcards. Reassemble your bulletin board, and spray paint your push pins to match.


Snazzy Storage Solutions


Jumbled office supplies detract from the attractiveness of home offices. Reorganizing your home office supplies will instantly make your office look better. Go a step further by employing appealing storage solutions. Better Homes & Gardens suggests mounting antique door pulls or old silver forks to the wall and using them to hang miscellaneous office supplies. Sort drawer items by using old tea trays or serving bowls as drawer dividers. Hide messy-looking items in large wicker baskets or big colorful boxes.







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