Designing a Home Office: Part 3

One of the things I have been working on to become more efficient is batching work. You know, for example, you write a bunch of blog posts all at once but then post them over time? Which is a funny thing when the world changes a lot in the interim.

In Minneapolis, the winds of change are blowing. The officer in the George Floyd case was charged with murder. (The three other officers were charged with lesser crimes as well.) The City council has pledged to dismantle the police force. White people are opening up their worldviews to understand the history of systemic racism and their complicit in these systems. There is a lot of work to do, but there is hope. Never has there been such a swing in opinion and attitude in such a short time.

Concurrent with all of that, many of us who are not sidelines by the pandemic are also still doing our jobs. A job in interior design can feel a little less than essential right now, but at a base level I still believe in the work we do and the power of home. It is my hope that, moving forward, I can share content on all these fronts. That we can all hold lots o ideas, lots of mode of work, in ourselves at once.

Today that means sharing part three in this home office makeover. You can catch up on the first post here and the second post here.

I bet you’re ready for some pretty stuff.

We left off with a pretty good sense of our main elevation, but there was an open question about the style of the uppers.

Choosing Wallpaper

To get to the rendering step, we dug in on color palette and a statement wallpaper. Last year we designed her sunroom in pale tones: white, grey, walnut, and a hit of blushy salmon with Kelly Wearstler’s Graffitto fabric on the throw pillows.

My client liked the idea of repeating a similar or related palette (and avoiding blue, as there is lots of blue throughout the house!) We also talked about some specific wallpapers that she loved. A couple of them didn’t lend themselves to this long horizontal strip, or were too subtle, or the pattern was too big to fit in the space we had.

So we came around to more from Kelly Wearstler and played around with Channells and Graffitto.

Renderings

We don’t always do renderings, but they can really help a client envision how the elements come together when we have such fixed shapes and sizes.

Our first round of mockups happened while we were still planning on lift-up uppers.. With the emphasis on the horizontal, we liked the idea of tuxedo cabinetry, where you have one color on the bottom and another on the top. (I talked my client out of tuxedo cabinetry in her kitchen several years ago—which I stand by for longevity, we did a contrast color on the island instead—but I liked the idea of getting that in here.) Splitting it this way also allows us to go for it with color, since there is less of it. We went walnut stain on the lowers and the frame of the uppers, and chose statement colors for the upper doors based on the wallpapers.

Kelly Wearstelr’s Channells in Latte and Suede

Kellt Wearstler’s Graffito in Black and white

Revising for Traditional Uppers

The clients chose Channells (the print repeat fits perfectly in the space), and the lighter brighter palette that went along with it. When we revised to more traditional uppers, we simple removed the walnut frame and kept everything above the wallpaper in the salmon tone, including the open shelves. We considered walnut for the shelving but it broke up the horizontal line and made the wall feel smaller.

Filling in the Blanks

Now with our major elements set, we can turn our attention to the final elements: rug, window treatments, pinboard, final lighting, etc. Coming in the next installement.

Thanks for following along!