There are certain colours and designs which never go out of fashion - monochrome is certainly one of them.
Whether it’s clothing, accessories, home decor, or office design, monochrome has been around for years and will probably still be around in many years to come.
This is a sleek, modern, and fresh look to an office space, but it is suitable for every single office?
No.
If you have a small office, or a space which is quite dark naturally, opting for monochrome could darken it even further, or pull the walls in and create a suffocating feel. In this case, you would be better going for something bright and colourful, light and airy, and allowing natural light to flood in and reflect off the walls.
If you have darker colours on the walls, natural light can’t reflect and will, therefore, make the room look smaller. However, the opposite is true; by painting or wallpapering your walls in a light shade, such as cream, white, light beige, etc, the light hits the wall, reflects back and creates a very useful optical illusion. Put simply, your room looks larger.
Now, monochrome is a traditional colour scheme and therefore it’s one that most people look towards. Offices look professional when they’re decorated in this back and white arrangement, but that doesn’t mean you always have to stick to tradition and trends. There are some other colour options which might suit your office better, linking in with the whole subject of colour psychology.
Check out this video which talks about how certain colours can affect your mood and your productivity levels.
If you want to inspire creativity and calmness, perhaps colours such as blue, green, or yellow could be a better choice. These can look equally as professional and sleek as monochrome but avoids the possible darkening that this design might otherwise bring.
At the end of the day, it really depends upon your office and its size. If you have a large, open-plan office, monochrome might look fantastic. It’s also about the balance between the two shades - if you have more of the lighter shade than the dark, e.g. less full blocks of black, then you’ll notice that the room feels lighter in feel and visually too. You could think about having white walls and then black designer office desks, perhaps with grey carpets or laminate flooring. This would still tie in with the monochrome look but would avoid the possible ‘too dark’ appearance.
When you think about changing your office interior design, you need to really take into account the look you’re going for and check carefully that it’s going to work. You can use swatches but you can also ask for professional advice. This is useful if you’re thinking about a full redecoration or renovation, as it saves you the and money over the long term.
You should also remember that you can have a plain colour on the walls and then accessories with funky office furniture in different colours. How about cream or white on the walls with purple chairs? You can have glass desks in all different colours and you could opt for a full-on biophilic look by simply adding in a few office plants here and there.
It’s entirely possible to have a neutral colour palette and then accessories around it and in some ways that’s a more useful way forward because you can change your furniture and accessories over time, far easier than you can change the colour of your walls!
It really comes down to thinking carefully before making any changes and being sure that you’re going for a productive colour scheme. Whilst monochrome is by no means unproductive, it depends on the size of the office in question. In that case, there might be other colour options which would create a more pleasant look, whilst also ticking the productivity box at the same time.