Minimalist interior design for home offices

Tidy space, tidy mind, so the saying goes. For some people, this simply means tidying their desk regularly, but for others a minimalist approach to office interior design is the ultimate way to improve productivity.

Minimalist interior design works particularly well for those who have home offices, as there’s always the danger that the office can become a gathering place for home clutter, or be treated as an afterthought in the overall interior design of your home. Here are some easy steps to create a calm and focused space to inspire and enable your best work.

Have storage to combat clutter

The secret to success with any minimalist interior design scheme is to include enough storage to keep the visible spaces free of clutter. If your business requires plenty of filing and storing of documents, be sure you have enough cupboards to tuck those things away in an ordered manner. If you have books you like to refer to for inspiration, it makes sense to have a shelf where they will fit so they don’t end up stacked on your desk.

Pick a simple colour scheme

Minimalism is often based around whites and soft neutrals, but colour accents can create a bit of personality in the space. Minimalist interior design needn’t be associated with a boring or bland colour scheme. If a gentle neutral is your base colour, why not add soft bronze or rose gold accents? Warm coloured textiles, in gentle ochre, orange or even coffee tones, complement the calming effect of cream or white walls and furniture.

Choose quality over quantity

The central luxury living tenet of investing in high-quality pieces goes double for minimalist interior design. After all, if you only have a few items of furniture or decoration in a space, it makes sense for them all to be beautifully designed – both aesthetically and functionally. What's more, high-quality pieces will generally last you longer – perhaps even a lifetime – which contributes to the minimalist goal of reducing waste and excess spending.

Ditch the unnecessaries with minimalist interior design

Whether we receive them as gifts, or buy them ourselves as decorations, plenty of items found in offices are often thoroughly unnecessary to our working process. Cast a critical eye over each item to be included in your office and ask yourself whether it actually contributes to your productivity. A minimalist office interior design may include, for example, a coffee machine – if coffee is a key part of your working day – and a desk planner or ‘ideas pad’. Things you might like to forgo could include desk tidies, tubs of paper clips, novelty desk ornaments and perhaps even a wall planner, if a digital calendar works just as well for you.