Our Dual Home Office Tour

Put your hand up if you work from home. I am a graphic designer who runs my own one-woman studio right here out of our home. I started my business in the middle of the pandemic when daycares were still closed, but I was fortunate enough to have a really kind friend who stepped in to watch Mabel for us while I worked. I am truly grateful that we had that care available to us so I could still get my work hours in, but needless to say, working from our main living space while our one year old played in the next room over was less than ideal. Mabel could hear me working and I could hear her playing, which resulted in a fair share of interruptions. I knew that I needed to set up a proper office space (preferably with a door), but my tight schedule meant that I had to chip away at it over a period of time. I can’t believe I am only sharing this space with you today because I completed it about a year ago now, but it really took some time to tweak it into the iteration you see now.

I always work from home and Curt occasionally works from home, so we figured it would be best to set up a dual workspace. We have a third bedroom upstairs that was home to my endless craft supplies and since we didn’t need that space for any specific purpose, we thought it would make a great office space. It sits on the south side of our home and gets oodles of natural light, which was inevitably appealing to me, as I personally feel most creatively inspired in an uplifting and bright environment. And when you work in a creative field, you have to hold onto any source of inspiration you can find.

The room is a square shape with a closet in one corner. We had the closet doors removed when we replaced the floors (long story) and hope to one day have them added back on, but for now, the closet space is open to the main room. The room was previously painted in a standard taupe-brown neutral colour by the previous owners, so the first thing I did was give it a nice fresh coat of white paint. We used the same white tone we have in the rest of our home, Falling Snow by Behr. The fresh white paired with the south-facing window really brightened up the room, making it the perfect blank canvas to set up our office.

Since Curt and I would be sharing the space, I decided to set up a double desk rather than piecing two separate desks together. I personally love to work on a big tabletop, so we decided to stretch the desktop nearly wall to wall. We assembled the desk ourselves using IKEA’s Alex drawer units on each end with a Karlby butcher block slab stretching between them. I wanted to keep all the finishes fairly neutral to maximize the light in the space and keep the entire room feeling pretty peaceful. I went for a strong sense of balance on our focal desk wall by purchasing two matching chairs, setting up our computers, and hanging matching plug-in wall sconces above each of our work areas. I didn’t want to clutter our working sight lines with artwork and wall-hangings, so I opted to leave the wall pretty blank. Instead, I installed a long shelf stretching the same length as the desktop near the top of the wall to store inspiring books and bring some life to the space with plants. I used a long piece of pine board from Home Depot and five Sandshult wall brackets from IKEA to create the shelf and ended up painting it all in the same white paint as the walls so it would carry less visual weight.

I filled the long wall shelf with some of my favourite books to find inspiration from at a moments notice. Working in a creative field is a dream, but it can often leave me feeling uninspired and creatively drained. My favourite way to find inspiration is by turning off the screen and experiencing something tactile, like thumbing through a printed book, going for a walk, or listening to some music. I like to keep some of these options in reach for a quick pick-me-up while I work at my desk. I also styled the shelf with a framed artwork that my Grandpa gifted us (he built the frame around an old calendar image) and the carved stone miniature furniture was gifted to my husband by a co-worker (it is a symbol of good luck and good fortune in Chinese culture). I potted the pathos with a dream that it would one day grow into a long trail that hangs down the length of the wall.

The room isn’t very big, so I decided to ground the space with a beautiful area rug. I wanted something that had a little bit of colour and pattern to break up all the neutral tones in the space. I love how it picks up on the bold accent chairs, but also brings in some other tones and texture. With a really low pile, it’s also very practical, affordable, and easy to keep clean.

One of my biggest considerations when pulling together our office space was how it functions practically. Obviously I highly value a beautiful and inspiring space to work in, but it also has to work with our needs. We decided to add a couple of shelves to the closet space to be able to store essential office supplies like our printer and extra paper. As I mentioned, the closet space is currently open to the rest of the room, so I did try to organize everything to the best of my ability in a neat and concise way, but ideally we will one day close it off with a door. This is not my favourite corner to see, but I decided to share it here so you could get the full picture. Other than basic office storage needs, I had tons of craft supplies that needed to find a home too. I found a beautiful antique cabinet on our local buy-and-sell a year or so ago and simply updated it with a coat of chalk paint in the colour Country Grey. I organized my supplies into matching kraft photo boxes, woven baskets, and some handmade canvas boxes. You can see the full process of creating that craft storage unit in the video I put out on our YouTube channel last summer.

I kept the additional decor in this space pretty minimal. I did, however, purchase a beautiful Futura screenprint by The Type Gallery and framed it beside my personal workspace. I love the simplicity of this print, but it is also my opportunity to tastefully design-geek out over my absolute favourite typeface. I also sprinkled a handful of past projects around the space in more discreet ways to keep me inspired. A few years ago, I completed a 100 Day Project based around pattern making. It was one of the most personally inspiring creative projects I completed and I love having my box of patterns sitting nearby as a reminder of how inspired I felt doing that project.

I know that I will continue to tweak this space as time marches on. I’ve mentioned the closet doors, but I would also love to add a comfortable accent chair to a corner or some more meaningful art pieces to the walls. I’ve been trying to accept that spaces take time. I want to rush to pull them together because of how satisfying that is, but I also want to be authentic to my drive for a beautiful space in the first place - to serve our family and the needs we have so that we can be the best that we can be in those spaces. I’m trying to let go of the desire for a dramatic before and after to instead embrace the beauty of the betweenness of space. All this to say that I know there are ways that this space will change over time, but I absolutely do love it now and don’t take how blessed I am to be able to work in here for granted. This is where my business is growing. This is where things are being created. This is where life is being lived. And I love it for that.

What does your work-from-home set up look like? It can be difficult to carve out a designated space, but whether it’s a spare room or a spare corner, it’s absolutely worth the effort to create this distinction. Here’s to more inspiring work created in this space ahead!

Sources

Desk drawers // Desk top // Office chairs // Wall sconces // Shelf brackets // Desk diffuser // Rug // Ceiling semi-flush mount light // Futura screen print (sold out but there are other great typefaces available) // Kraft photo storage boxes // Please reach out if you require any specific links that are not included in this list. You can also read our affiliate disclosure here.