Dress That Desk For Success!

Whether you’re working from home or helping the kids with their distance learning or - our hearts go out to you - both! Your desk area is your best feature giving you the motivation and that much needed inspiration to carry you through your work day. We’re sharing decor strategies and expert tips to dress that desk for success!

Creative Spaces

It may be a struggle to find space in your home to create an efficient workspace. These built-in shelves and desk area under the stairway are a great solution.

Closet Transformed

We know it may be difficult to give up closet space, however, this space utilizes every inch! When you’re done working, slide out the chair and close those doors and put your work away for the day.

Corner Office

There’s no fighting for that corner office at home, or there certainly will be when you carry out this tropical theme. Working your desk area around a window will keep you motivated. Layer in the details with wallpaper, custom roman-fold shades and upholstered seating.

In The Nook

Build out that nook with custom cabinetry. Be sure to wrap your desk around to provide plenty of surface work area for your computer, tablets, and writing space.

Bring The Outdoors In

Invite the outdoors inside to transform any room and easily control the light with motorized window coverings. You won’t even have to interrupt your work to close or open the shades with a remote control. Luminette Privacy Sheers have the best lighting options for this space providing filtered light and room darkening qualities as well, or draw the shades completely off the windows to let the outside in.

Be Inspired

To be completely inspired in your workspace, surround yourself with things you love in textures, patterns and your signature color. Photo features fabrics and wallcoverings from our Jaclyn Smith collection exclusively for Trend Fabrics.

Room Takeover

That spare room is wanting to be your office! Start with the floors and be sure they’re worry-freeeeee. A commercial vinyl-plank is a practical solution that is not only visually appealing, but is dent-proof, water-proof, and totally ooops-proof too. Floors featured: Hallmark Courtier.

Add Interest With Floors

Seagrass rugs are a great selection for your home office and can be installed wall-to-wall or fabricated into a custom area rug. Seagrass & Sisal looks can also be found in Wool and Wool-blend carpets.

Distance Learning Stations

Continuing our mission to formulate the ultimate solutions for working from home we could not proceed without bringing our thoughts to this page on Distance Learning. The ever-present struggles of providing an efficient Distance Learning Station is something we are seeing first-hand with our own children and their children too! We reached out to our education experts, our daughters, Carrisa Montenegro and Eileen Higgins, to see how they were approaching the madness of working while at the same time managing their children’s online schooling. Here’s what they had to say …

Organize

The first thing that was mentioned by both Carrisa and Eileen is being organized. Posting schedules on the wall with all log-in information, passwords, etc., will give your kids a great start to their day!

We discovered this photo on Houzz and love this set-up for on-line schooling. To create this look on a budget use low-profile file cabinets and for the work surface you can even use a door to span over the space. To individualize each space consider using cork on the wall, frame it and post it will all the necessary info and some fun photos too.

Flooring pictured is a waterproof vinyl plank floor. This floor, this amazing floor, is waterproof, dent-proof, and oooops-proof too! To see our entire line of vinyl plank flooring stop by our showroom or click on the photo.

educators and decorators come together

“The big things are organization and aesthetics. I had all of Diego’s things organized with schedules on the wall, but it was a sad, colorless space. It should be a little more inviting. ”

— Carrisa Montenegro

Inviting Spaces

Creating an attractive, inviting, space to inspire learning begins with colors that you and your children love. Suitable spaces should be age appropriate and a great time to work together on bringing it all together - together.

Things to consider: Lighting is an essential! Shades that easily block the glare from computer screens and block distractions from outside too.

Enough space for writing is key!

“The laptop took up much of Diego’s desk space, so he had little space to write.” ___Carrisa

The Power Of Color

This playful floor is created using a mix of VCT tiles.

Consider these tips for selecting colors to learn by:

• Blue increases productivity

• Red stimulates brain activity

• Green is very relaxing and is associated with nature and creativity

• Purple is a color that children prefer

• Bold reds and oranges may increase a child’s IQ by attracting their attention to details.

• The ranking of color preference internationally is blue, followed by red, green, violet, orange and yellow.

“Find a quiet place that is uncluttered with all materials organized and have necessary info (schedules, logins, etc.) posted. Kids need a variety of seating to help them work. Appropriately sized chairs, bean bags, pillows, exercise balls, etc. ”

— Eileen Higgins

Shhhhh… We’re learning here

Taking a tip from Eileen to create a quiet space is by individualizing the learning space. Remove distractions, cell phones, little siblings underfoot… (ha! that’s a good one) What is distracting for one, may not distract the other. Take it day-by-day and be open to changes.

When designing the desk area think “vignette”, as a space within a space. This look was created with Trend fabrics wallcovering and custom drapery.

All about chairs

Eileen and Carrisa both agree on appropriately sized chairs. So how do we go about accomplishing comfort while sitting at the computer for a good part of the day?

Consider: A fitted cushion for the seat or reupholstering the chair seat - We can help you with that!

What are the best desk chairs for kids? We found an entire guide on selections just for kids.

Click here to see selection guide.

Photo of our Pirouette Window Shadings will cheer up any home office or learning center.

A permanent solution

Have you discovered that you love working from home or that you’d love to give your kids a more permanent solution for their home schooling? This She Shed was built for you! A space to get away and call all your own is stylish and built to your specifications.

Our Knight’s team provides services for all your remodeling needs! We are happy to put you in touch with local, qualified contractors as well.

Click the pic to learn more about our services.

Photo Credit: Dominic AZ Bonuccelli

Our Kids Want To Go Back To School!
in the meantime, improvise …

Not all kids have desks. Folding tables, ping-pong tables and the like give sufficient space as shown in one of our staff’s photos of their kiddos. “We’re looking for the positives in distance learning and one of the things our kids love is that their online schooling is portable. They’ve worked out on the patio (Must have WI-FI extender) in our offices, and at their Gramma’s too”. _____C. Silva

“E-Learning in progress. Please don’t ring unless you have wine or teach math.”

With many thanks to our contributors!

Carrisa Montenegro is a teacher at a private prep school in Anaheim.

Eileen Higgins is a director at Almond Acres Charter Academy here locally.

In closing….

It was great to work with Carrisa and Eileen on creating this BLOG and I think we were “schooled” just a little bit on the importance of creating an efficient learning space at home.

Our decorators and installers have put together many a home office and our wish is that you found some inspiration to dress your desk for success.

We invite you to share your own solutions for working or schooling at home by posting in the comments, photos are welcome too!

Thank you so much for joining us!

Take care. Be well. Happy Decorating.

Sheryl & Gordon Knight