Good office design is essential to a productive working environment. If you’re overburdened at work, and your surroundings are ugly, you could end up feeling thoroughly demoralised and consequently you won’t be able to work efficiently.

How to create a well-designed office

You don’t have to be an architect or interior designer to create a satisfactory working environment. Most offices tend to gather clutter; broken chairs, redundant pieces of technology and dying plants are commonplace. In the first instance dispose of unused furniture and other items and you’ll create more space so that you can reorganise the office. If your chairs have castors fitted – www.tente.com is a good source of these – they’ll be easy to move about while you are creating the new environment. Look at some style magazines and go online to carry out some research before your office makeover.

Most offices don’t aid productivity

A recent article in The Guardian suggested that ‘many offices are unsatisfactory places to work, inspiring neither good ideas nor high levels of high productivity. Many employees, it seems, would be more productive if they could work elsewhere.’ Change is afoot, and design companies are rising to the challenge. Contemporary thinking demands that ‘the office is an all-around sensory experience designed to make people good and more creative.’ That said, many designers completely forget about certain areas of the office, like the bathroom, for example. Get in touch with a reputable provider such as One Point Partitions to make sure you don’t make the same mistake.

Take a look at the office environment as a whole

The design blog The Stylist suggests that the way in which we work as a whole should be re-evaluated. The 9-5 routine started in response to the poor lighting standards of the 19-century. Perhaps more people should work at home and only come into the office for meetings and brain storming sessions. Erin Falconer from PickThe Brain.com believes that humans are only really productive at the start of the day, and in many companies productivity tends to tail off during the afternoon.

Offices should be a space where workers can recharge their batteries in order to be more creative. Office bonding is essential in contemporary life and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg asked for his seat to be placed among his colleagues to reduce the feelings of hierarchy in the company.

Office work cubicles kill creativity

There is little more boring and alienating than the traditional office cubicle where you are locked away from your colleagues for most of your working day. People work more efficiently when they can bounce ideas off their colleagues; one increasing trend is that of the standing meeting room, this was recently introduced at Microsoft. The concept has shortened meetings, which is always a good thing.

Architects have started to realise that offices should evolve around humans and not the other way. The architect Lee Penson designs numerous offices and he believes that, ‘when we move to working on tablets there won’t be any need for the traditional work station.’ He also advocates that workers should have space to lie on the floor in order to allow their creative juices to flow.