What are the benefits of a personalized work space?

Personalizing your workspace is a great avenue for unleashing creativity and creating inspiration in your environment. Let’s take a look at just a few of the amazing ways catering your space to reflect your taste and identity can help you more easily focus and work smarter.

Encourages focus and comfort 

We believe expressing your identity within your space brings not only comfort but also productivity, and scientists agree. Studies suggest that a personalized workspace and maintaining privacy can produce positive psychological benefits for workers, which leads to higher productivity. Here are some more benefits you can expect from personalizing your workspace.

Eliminate Distraction

Say goodbye to the stress of hovering coworkers and peering eyes. Open layout workspaces can work for some but others have found them to increase distraction and decrease face-to-face communication. Having a personal area dedicated to your workshop can keep your creative flow going all day long.

Another helpful tool to minimize distractions is noise-canceling headphones. Noise-canceling headphones, if allowed in your office, don’t necessarily need to be just for playing music. They let you block out unwanted noise and can deter people looking to stroll by for a chat. Many people suffer from sensitivity to excess noise or overstimulating background ambiance, so headphones are great for helping focus.

Dimmable lights can also help workers prone to overstimulation or distraction by allowing them to exercise more control over their surrounding light. Customizable lighting allows work to continue into darker hours without being forced to choose between uncomfortable brightness and the eye-searing darkness of bright screens.

Work Comfortably

Working comfortably begins with the space you work within, and often expands beyond furniture or decoration. We all have our quirks and habits we often feel must be shuttered away when it comes time to work. Often the professional world seeks rigid conformity to the “way things are done,” but if something doesn’t work for you, then why do we feel compelled to hold onto it?

Take the standard desk and office chair. There is no quicker way to lose focus and give yourself back pain than an uncomfortable chair and desk—take it from just about anybody who works in an office or workshop setting. Finding the comfiest chair can be a struggle, and paying for higher quality can be difficult for many. However, it can save money and reduce pain in the long run to drop a few extra dollars if you’re able. 

Another option is doing away with a chair altogether. Nowadays, many professionals opt for standing desks, and businesses are quickly picking up on the trend. A 2019 poll by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 60% of employers offered the option of subsidizing a standing desk to their employees compared to just 20% five years prior.

Protect Your Vision From Harsh Light

Research into the effects of harsh lighting conditions caused by screens is still ongoing. One element we’re learning more about that is potentially dangerous to eyesight is blue light. Protecting your eyes with blue-light filtering glasses is a great first step. The next step to take is to discover the versatility of layering your lighting.

Good layered lighting starts with taking a look at your ambient lighting. You can achieve beautiful results with higher-coverage lights such as designer-focused floor lights or wall lights which fill a room with warm color and comfort.

You can also invest in task lighting which can be used during work. Table lights make excellent solutions for task lighting and can be used independently of higher and brighter lights. This allows you to achieve a layered and dynamic versatility in your workspace that a single light can’t as easily provide. For lighting inspiration, check out Gantri’s top five recommendations for lights to install in your home office space.

Supports mental and emotional well-being

Self-expression in a working space is much more than a bold decorative choice. Breaking the boundaries between our work life and personal identities is quickly becoming an integral part of the professional world. Here are a few ideas on how to own your identity in your workspace, and what role lighting plays both in your space and your emotional core.

Owning Your Workspace

For those who work in public office spaces, personalizing your space can provide a sense of ownership and control in a shared, corporate environment. If you’re going to be spending your 9-5 in a place, you might as well make it feel like another home.

Incorporate personal touches such as photos of loved ones to keep your spirits high, plants to improve the air, or beautiful lighting solutions to keep your space and your mood high. The creative energy spent decorating may just transfer into your work and inspire you even further.

How Can Lighting Improve Our Emotions?

The color temperature of light can greatly affect a space’s mood and those within it, but it can be difficult to know the right choice Many commercial light bulbs have a cooler color temperature (around 3,500K) that is well-suited for productivity. However, it isn’t appealing to exist in that lighting for an entire day. 

Gantri’s collection of lighting solutions uses a standardized museum-quality LED bulb with a color temperature of 2,700K. This creates a warm and homey glow for your desk. It’s perfect for everything from early mornings to late nights.

Enhances creativity

When you’re deciding how you want to express yourself, don’t be afraid to craft a space that’s uniquely you. A personalized workspace can provide a lift in creativity and innovation by providing both inspiration and comfort. You can decide if you prefer to work on a chair or a yoga ball, in bright lights or dark, standing or sitting. Only you can know what the best practices for your space will be.

Also, don’t be afraid to experiment and flex with new ideas, decor, and possibilities. Some of our best creative energies are born when we try new things and seek out the unfamiliar. Think of your workspace as an ever-evolving project that you can maintain and change throughout your time spent in it.

Boost confidence and motivation

We hope you’ve found some inspiration among these ideas, and are already considering how you can personalize your space to reflect your accomplishments, values, and goals. Personalization can give you a boost in creativity and confidence every day. 

For more of the best designer-quality lights around, artfully crafted and ecologically manufactured, check out our Gantri for more stories and ideas.