Tag: office design

August 30, 2019

Workplace Design: The Comforts of Home

There’s no place like home. Home-like environments in the office can lead to more comfortable, and presumably, happier workers. And happy workers, according to current theories, work harder. In fact, studies show that happy workers are more productive and creative.

Enter resimercial design—a design style that brings the homey feel of residential furnishings, layouts, and amenities into the workplace. Resimercial design is a marriage of commercial durability with a residential feel, a style that celebrates residential-inspired features over the standardized feel of traditional corporate designs and furnishings. The goal behind resimercial design and furnishings is to make the workspace a welcoming, comfortable place to spend time, something that employees are increasingly demanding. Millennials, in particular, are a big part of what’s driving the demand. Today’s professionals want spaces that inspire. They want spaces that allow them to express their individuality, as well as collaborate with others. This trend is especially important to millennials who grew up with mobile technology that allowed them to seek out the best, most comfortable places to study and collaborate.

Getting Started With Resimercial Design

Ambiance

Designing your new resimercial office with a focus on ambient features will help to make your office feel less formal and structured.

Wood look tiles are often the answer to inject warmth and create a homey vibe into commercial spaces. Shown here is Fountaine porcelain tile in Noce.

Durability

Most residential furnishings and materials can’t stand up to the hard wear and tear that commercial environments are subject to. Fortunately, the resimercial trend has caused many suppliers to offer lines of residential-inspired furniture and materials with commercial quality.

Contempo porcelain tile in in Calacatta

Collaboration

The resimercial design movement prioritizes the power of collaboration. With this in mind, focus on layout features that facilitate movement and interconnection.

Traverse porcelain tile in Grey

Variability

It’s important to remember that comfort is subjective. In addition to collaborative spaces, create a variety of spaces, including secluded areas, to suit different needs and individual work styles.

Farmhouse porcelain tile in Beige

Many companies like Google and Lyft have successfully invested in resimercial design for their offices so that workers can relax and collaborate more naturally. There’s really no argument—making the workplace feel like home helps to increase employee retention, productivity, and creativity.

GIO is your gateway to beautifully designed, strategically selected collections of floor and wall tile sure to fit your demanding specification requirements and unique style. We look forward to working with you!

March 31, 2016

GIO Looks at Workplace Design Trends in 2016

Rustic elements with colorful finishes are a 2016 workplace design trend.

Late in the first decade of our current century, major dot-com’s like Google and Facebook began to influence how office environments are designed. Since then, we’ve been witnessing the gradual death of the cubicle farm and the birth of shared workspaces that encourage networking, creativity, and collaboration. But what else is happening in office design? Here’s a look at some of the top work design trends in 2016.

Flexible Workspaces
Traditional designs with permanent layouts are giving way to flex spaces with modular components that that can be mixed, stacked and moved around. The needs of today’s work landscape are dynamic and ever-changing, with modern workspace design eschewing rules-based planning in favor of using clever re-configureable elements.

Designated Lounge Areas
The extreme opposite of the rigid work station, designated lounge areas are now included in most new workplace designs. Wireless technology that is lighter and more powerful than ever has set us free, and quite simply, these more laid-back lounge areas stimulate relaxed collaboration and make work more enjoyable.

Personal Space
While the open plan has many advantages, it may not be for everyone, or the best solution at all times. Workspace designers now look for ways to provide quiet personal space around the office, from updated cubicles to cocoon-like furnishings with integrated technology.

Community Tables
Gone are the days when communal tables were relegated to cafeterias and beer halls; the community table today reflects a cultural shift. As people have been looking for more interaction in public settings, these shared tables have been making an appearance in restaurants and hotels for some time. Today, the community table has emerged as a relevant feature of the evolving workplace.

Dressed Up Rustic
While salvaged or reclaimed wood looks made their way from coffee shops and restaurants to well-designed workplaces a few years ago, designers are now dressing up those rustic touches with colorful finishes for more modern looks.

September 24, 2015

GIO Tile Looks at Color Psychology in the Work Environment

Everyone enjoys a freshly painted environment, including office employees. But, if you are considering a new office paint color, you’ll need to look beyond the trends, colors of the year, and even what you like. Color creates a powerful emotional stimulus, and your color choice can stimulate, energize, inspire, calm, soothe, or focus your employees. You will want to choose the right colors that might increase productivity, creativity, and general morale. You’ll also want to consider which colors are best for your particular business environment.

Here are helpful color psychology tips on how to select the best colors and tones for your office.

Nature-Inspired Colors
Soft or muted colors, inspired by nature are thought to relax and calm. Muted shades of green, blue, brown and beige are soothing colors and are good choices for doctors’ offices.

Yellow
If you’re goal is to add a bit of cheer to the environment, yellow is an energizing color that will create a happy, optimistic atmosphere.

Sophisticated Palettes
If you’re in the luxury business, you’ll want to choose a sophisticated palette. Black and white schemes, for instance, are considered distinctive and elegant.

Bright Hues
Bright, saturated colors will inspire creativity and increase energy. They are good choices for creative environments like advertising agencies.

Blue
Need to boost confidence around the office? Then blue is your color. Blue shades are also thought to increase productivity, and they suggest loyalty as well. When asked what their favorite color is, people around the world most commonly answer blue, thus going with this hue is often a design choice.

Red
Be careful with red! While red is known to boost energy and stimulate appetites, it also reduces analytical thinking. Red may not be a helpful hue if you need to stay on task.

Pink
Unlike its cousin red, pink is known to calm people down. Studies have shown that pink works quickly to tame the nerves, calming people down in about a half hour. Furthermore, once people have been soothed by a pink environment are likely to stay calm. This could be a great color for areas in law offices where conversations could get heated.

White
White instills a feeling of cleanliness and purity, making it a popular option for hospital and kitchen environments. White is considered sleek and has a modern appeal, but be aware that too much white can elicit boredom, causing people to reflect too much on their own thoughts.

Warm and Cool Hues
If you live in a particularly cold or warm environment, you can actually use color to change how a person perceives the temperature. Colors in the warm spectrum, such as orange, red and yellow, can cause people to think the temperature in the room is warmer than it actually is, while cool colors, such as blue, green and purple, have the opposite effect. Business owners can use this to their advantage in attempt to save on heating and cooling costs.

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