Designing an office space isn’t like designing your home since an office has to be both practical and pretty as well as inspiring and creating a unique experience for various types of people. For the past few years, we’ve seen employers putting effort into creating workspaces that will be a part of individual worker’s identity as well as company’s culture and it reflects on the design, too. From upgraded desks to eco-friendliness, here’s what’s hot in commercial interior design right now.
New types of desks
Long gone are the times when every employee had its own cubicle with a simple desk – with the increasing number of people working remotely, many collaborative meetings, and the development of technology, new types of desks are beginning to appear in modern office spaces. We all know how sitting is bad for your health (to the extent that experts started calling sitting the new smoking) and that’s why desks with adjustable height became a norm in many workspaces.
Treadmill workstations are the next level of this while data-integrated and “wireless” desks are a must for everyone using a lot of tech in their daily job. It’s all about desks that adapt to the worker’s need and not the other way around and that’s the reason why next-level desks are the future of commercial interior design.
Turning to collaborative approach
Isolated cubicles are a thing of the past – modern jobs require a lot of communication and teamwork and that’s why design is turning to the collaborative approach. For example, many companies now have circular workstations and have removed panels that once separated desks from each other.
The use of collaborative furniture promotes relaxed atmosphere and turns an office into a lounge area, making the work easier and boosting productivity. If you’re wondering what happened to privacy, now you can equip your office with acoustic furniture and therefore organize a private meeting in the middle of your office, whenever you want.
Hiring the Mother Nature
As it is in home interior design, bringing the outdoors inside is a huge trend in commercial design as well. There are many ways to make Mother Nature your best employee – by using the right shades on the walls and furniture, adding a few office plants, or using natural materials when furnishing your office space.
When it comes to current commercial office design, deep tones inspired by nature, such are all shades of grey, dark green and cold blue, are very trendy and can make every office space look fantastic. Biophilic design is getting more and more attention and since collaborating with nature is proven to have a lot of benefits for the humans (stress reduction, emotional well-being, to name just a few), this trend seems to be here to stay.
Becoming earth-friendly
This green madness and trying to be friendly to the environment is spreading across all parts of our lives and workspaces aren’t an exception. It’s because companies are becoming obliged to meet eco standards so the whole commercial buildings are now becoming eco builds. For example, photovoltaic glass is a must have material for the windows because it has solar cells incorporated into the window surface and will allow offices to generate their own energy. There’s plenty of other ways to go green in occupational setting – from stocking reusable pens and reducing the printing waste to making everything digital and saving the electricity.
As you can see, commercial interior design trends are following the shifts in our lifestyles and trying to make things as easy as possible for the workers. Add prettiness of the contemporary design to the practicality new trends bring and you’ll understand why companies are so eager to make changes in their offices. It’s not about the fact that it looks great – it also boosts workers’ productivity so it’s really a win-win situation for both the employers and the employees.
