How To Decorate A Home Office

Hi, I'm Adrienne Chinn. I'm an interior designer based in London, England. Today, I'm going to talk to you about an aspect of interior design.

Today, we're going to look at the home office or what I like to call a study. I quite like studies to be quite warm and feel a bit cocooning when you go into them. It just kind of envelopes you which I find encourages me to work.

I find if studies or home offices are a bit too bright, I don't sit down that long. I tend to like to get up and get myself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, so I do quite like a little bit of cocooning effect when I go into my workspace. Now, what I've developed here is a very warm welcoming enveloping design for a study.

I've started with a very nice warm oak floor here. They call this a mist. It has a very slight grayish tone to the oak, nice wide planks which always help a small room and studies and offices that tend to be quite small.

Wide plank wood floors tend to help visually widen the room so they're quite a good idea to have, very practical as well. Alternatively, if you want something a little bit more comfortable on the foot, I have chosen this very practical natural weave wool carpet. This is wall to wall, and this is a nice neutral colour, kind of a tope colour that would work very well with any type of scheme, really.

So, you have an alternative of a wood or a carpeted floor. Now, what I've done is I've started with a wall colour that tones with either of these choices. This is called Tuscan earth.

It's from Fired Earth and it's just a very warm neutral colour. So, I've started with that. I would do the woodwork in a soft white colour and what I've also done to add some interest, a little bit of a sense of humor, a little bit of weight to a room, is to have one feature wall full of these books.

So, you're in a home office, you're in a study, why not have a feature of all of your books there and that just adds a little bit of fun to the room, I think. Then, what I've done is I've chosen this very nice wall sateen stripe in the gray and the warm tones which you see also in your wallpaper and which are reflected in your floor and rug colours, your carpet colours, and I've used these as either curtains or roman blind, depends what size your window is but I would use it either way. As a roman blind, it's very nice because you do see the whole stripe across the blind so I think I'd probably prefer it as a roman blind.

And then, your desk chair, consider upholstering a desk chair and then this is a faux suede which is a very tough, easily wipeable if you get an ink stain on it or anything like that and very comfortable to sit in. If you're working at home a lot, it's nice to have a chair that's both ergonomic and that's comfortable. The fabric is comfortable.

Then, it's quite nice if you have the space to have a sofa bed in your home office or study. Sometimes, it's nice to have a sit-on on that and have a read rather than sit on your desk and quite often, people's home offices double up as guest bedrooms. So, I've chosen this quite nice wool, very hardwearing again and it has that light gray tone but what it also does is it picks out a very warm yellow which I've now then used as some cushions on the sofa.

This is a cotton velvet. It's very sturdy so that would look very nice. It picks out that warm yellow and it ties with the colour of the floor if you have the oak floor, so that adds warmth to your scheme and I've also put cushions in the same fabric, just a different colour way, in this very warm tope which tones with the colour in your roman blind.

So, what we've got here is a neutral scheme. Your accent colour is this warm gold tone which tones with your floor and this fabric, and we've also played with a variety of patterns. We've got this plaid on the sofa.

We've got the stripe on the roman blinds and then we have this really fun accent wall of that books which I think just adds a little bit of an unexpected touch to the r