How To Brand Your Office In 4 Easy Steps

The minute you walk into a space, the office culture should be clear. How the materials, colors, and finishes work together create your brand image, which is why designing your office is so important. The goal is to curate a space that’s both comfortable for your employees and impressive to your visitors.

When people walk into your home, they have an idea of who you are. The same should be said for your business. How you utilize your space, whether it’s your personal workspace or an entire office, is very telling. Here are four simple steps to branding your office:

1. Choose colors that reflect the brand.

The right colors will really accentuate who you are as a company and bring out the energy you want to project. Certain colors evoke specific emotions. For example, blues symbolize trust and loyalty; yellow, orange, and red are associated with high energy; green is representative growth and freshness; white represents purity and cleanliness. However, too much of anything can have an adverse effect.

Choosing the right color is more important than you think, and visitors aren’t the only people who will feel the brand based on your color choices. Consider the people who are in the office on a day-to-day basis. A University of Texas study found that color can have a direct impact on productivity. Beige, grey, and all-white offices have been linked to sadness and depression, particularly in women. Low wavelength colors like blue and green improve focus and efficiency. Psychologists often view yellow as optimism and is linked with innovation. A great color picking program and matching tool like Pantone will help you narrow in on the perfect color (the system has been used to choose famous colors like Tiffany blue and Minions yellow, and Target red).

2. Use proper signage.

When visiting an office space, one of the first things you see is the office signage — an introduction to the space. This isn’t something you should skimp out on. Signage should show the company name and/or logo. Thankfully, there are endless options for entryway office signage. A sleek stainless steel or frosted glass sign could evoke minimalism, while a large, colorful, raised letter sign could be bold and powerful. Be sure that your signage matches with the rest of the office and company branding.

3. Your furniture and fixings should match your brand.

Furniture is a great foundation for branding and is really the meat of your office. One of the first brand-based decisions you’ll make is between traditional and modern furniture. If you want to present your company as being forward-looking, innovative and fun, there are a plethora of you can choose from: minimalist glass tables, sleek mesh seats, breakout furniture. If your brand values a more traditional approach, opt for conventional furnishing, like wooden tables and leather chairs. Sleek, modern furniture would work great for a tech business or a business that requires high levels of collaboration.

If you have a distinct product or service, bring it to the forefront and highlight it. We recommend taking a look at office design blogs and using their images as inspiration. Pinterest is also a great platform to help narrow down your ideas — a simple search of “office design” will yield thousands of results. If you know the type of decor that you want, but can’t figure out how to bring to life, type in a search term like “sleek office design.” Working with a third party design company will also help bring more ideas to the table based on what you hope the office will evoke for your brand.

4. Think about creativity boosters.

Whether your business is a dental office or an advertising firm, it could benefit from some creativity. Creativity comes in all forms: an employee could come up with a new filing system for a dental office while another just created an award-winning ad campaign at an advertising firm. One way to inject creativity into the office is to have more open spaces — which is proven to increase collaboration and connection and help empower your team. Another idea is to to create a breakout space that allows your employees to take a break, come together, and socialize.

Bringing some nature into the office can also work wonders for your overall aesthetic. According to a study conducted by England’s University of Exeter, employees with a small plant on their desk were 47 percent more creative and 40 percent more productive.