If you’ve been following my last few posts you will know that I recently opened a small coworking space for female entrepreneurs in Totnes, Devon. I worked with a local interior designer, Caiomhe McKenna of Yellow Brick Road Design, to come up with the design for the interior and one of the things that she helped me with is the selection of artwork to put up in the space.
I wanted the office to feel cosy and have a bit of personality as well as look beautiful and one way I did this was by bringing in some artwork to hang on the walls. My go-to has always been Desenio when it comes to artwork and I have a selection of artwork from Desenio in my living room. What I really like about them is that the selection that they stock is just vast. I know that there will always be something that will work, no matter what space you are working with. But there are a number of ways that you can choose the artwork that will fit your space.
Choose Artwork in a Specific Colour
As I knew I wanted the office to have a certain vibe and I already had a distinctive colour palette in mind, I searched manually through the site for posters that I knew would work with that colour scheme. I found the posters above which I think work really well together. I was able to tell that they would work well together because I clicked the little heart icon on each poster which added them to my favourites list and I was then able to see them side by side. This is such a helpful tool.
You don’t have to search manually though. You can also search the site by filtering by colour. For example, if you know you’re looking for artwork for an office in a particular colour, you can simply use the handy filtering system to pull up all the artwork that falls in that palette. You can also filter by size, format and theme so you can bring up quite specific results that meet your criteria.
It’s really easy to bring up results for artwork in a pink and green colour palette, for example, by simply selecting the checkboxes. If you want to refine this further you can also select a theme, such as abstract, and see what that returns.
Choose Artwork by Theme
It may be that you want to create a certain theme in your office space. In which case, you may prefer to choose your artwork that matches this theme. For example, perhaps your business has something to do with the great outdoors so artwork that contains images of nature may be appropriate. Nature is also proven to increase wellbeing when incorporated into interiors and this includes faux plants or pictures of plants.
If you work in a corporate office with employees, you may need to give extra thought to the theme of your artwork to make sure it is suitable and is sending the correct message about your company culture and ethos.
However, if you work from a home office, the theme could be absolutely anything you like, it may be travel related, or maybe you love abstract art, or you may want to be surrounded by images of ballet dancers and swans. The options are limitless.
Think About your Branding
As this is your office, you may want to send a distinctive message about your branding through the artwork that you choose to display. For example, if you run an eco-friendly company that uses natural materials and has a strong focus on sustainability, you may want to choose images that reflect this.
For my coworking space, I wanted to send the message that this is a space where women can feel empowered and supported and where they can come together to help one another create a better future. In order to find this artwork, I did the obvious thing and typed some relevant words into the search bar. First I tried ‘woman’ and then ‘female’ and it returned exactly what I was looking for. It was then just a case of narrowing down the selection to the ones I wanted to use.
How do you want to feel in the space?
The final thing you may want to consider when choosing artwork for an office is how you want to feel in the space. You may want to choose artwork that is calming and brings a sense of serenity if your work is particularly stressful. You may want to create a fun and carefree atmosphere with your art. Or you may want to inspire the people working in the space and remind them how great they are with artwork that is full of positive affirmations or inspirational quotes. Typographic artwork is great for this and it can also be used no matter what the style or colour you’ve gone for in the room.
Once you’ve chosen your artwork, the next step is deciding how you are going to arrange it on the walls. Desenio has you covered here too and this is another reason why this site is my go-to for artwork. If you want to create a gallery wall, they have some handy templates already made up so you can see what size images will work well together and how to lay them out.
And lastly, if you are completely overwhelmed by the whole process of choosing and just want something that will look nice and fit your space, you could just order a ready-made gallery wall from the inspirational images that are on the site. You can simply select a room that contains a gallery wall that takes your fancy and order the whole thing. Job done!
Thankfully, I was able to find the perfect artwork for my coworking space and I think you’ll agree it looks pretty great!
SO what do you think of these tips? Have you had to choose artwork for an office? If so how did you do it? I’d love to hear about your experience so please leave me a comment below. And don’t forget to pin this post for later.
