Home office paint colour? Post your rooms please!

[Haggisman]

Getting close to finishing redecorating my home office, but I'm really struggling with what colour to go on the walls.

It's quite a small room (~2.4m x 2.4m) so could do with a lighter colour to make it feel bigger and not too imposing. It was quite a strong blue before (think royal blue rather than navy), and it felt quite enclosed - I've gone over that with a few coats of white and that made the room feel a lot bigger.

I though I'd settled on a nice pale grey/blue colour (Dulux Ocean Stone) but having done the walls, I'm not feeling it. It's just too blue - it's a lovely colour... for my 4 year old's room! Not really the grown up "sophisticated" look I was going for

I was thinking maybe something a bit more green/brown/beige/terracotta type earthy tones for a more natural feel, but not sure how that would work.

Doing a google search for "home office colours" gives lots of results with really strong dark colours, which I think would make the room feel too claustrophobic :/

Could do with some suggestions & photos of your home setups to get some ideas please

 

[Haggisman]

Thanks - that proud peacock is a lovely colour, IIRC we were considering that for our hallway at one point!

I like the idea of the panelling suggested in that thread, but not sure how well it would work in a mundane 1950s terrace, rather than a nice Georgian/Victorian townhouse!

I picked up a stack of tester pots at lunchtime, gone for some warmer tones than the blue, so I'll see how those look.

 

[Haggisman]

Tried a load of testers... honestly I'm not 100% sure on any of them - front runners so far would be either the lightest green colours (the 2 top left), or the light stone colour (middle bottom), although the darker brown is OK too (bottom left).

However, now thinking maybe just be boring and go for a creamy white instead

Furniture and fittings wise, I'm aiming for a lot of natural wood - my desktop is oak, and I've been looking at some nice oak coloured floating shelves, which would like nice on a lighter background, and probably not great with brown. Also hoping to add several plants to the room, and some nice wall art, so I guess that would provide the much needed colour.

Could also do with any ideas on what to do with this stupid pointless alcove space!:

Existing/previous floorplan as below - desk is probably going to stay in the same place (only other place it will fit is in front of the window), bookshelf is a big Ikea billy ( the ~2m one), which is probably going to go as it's taking up a lot of space, and blocking off the alcove so it essentially became a dumping ground of "stuff" to get out of the way . I'll still need some space for books, so to be replaced with aforementioned floating shelves. I was thinking of putting these in the alcove, but given how narrow it is, I'm not sure how much space that would leave me to actually get in to grab the books!

Along the wall with the radiator, I'm hoping to put some kind of narrow tall table/standing desk for my music stuff.

Yes... the room is a strange and annoying shape

 

[Haggisman]

My first thought was that it looked like a dirty protest!

Haha, yes, the brown under the light switch looked really nice on the sample card in the shop, but on the wall it looks like someone has smeared a turd

I would choose, the second in from the left on the top and the third in on the bottom row.

What are the paint names? Often Dulux etc, show complimentary colours.

Yeah, those are my favourites so far as well

Those ones are:

Ancient Sandstone (from the Heritage range) and Dried Sage

I'd maybe paint the green colour along the wall with the radiator and the rest, given their shape and the lighter, cream colour.
Having the white radiator will also provide another bit of accent against the green colour.

Yeah, that could work - also means you get the colour when first entering the room, but it's not too imposing over all

The tester pots are quite big, so I'll try a bigger area of those 2 later on/over the weekend

 

[Haggisman]

I can't find Ancient Sandstone on their site, but Dried Sage gives these colours as combos:

Neutral
City Fog
Dried Sage
Spiders Web

Tonal Combination
Sea Nettle
Dried Sage
Tea Tree

Designer
Berry Pop
Dried Sage
Rose Trellis 5

Dried Sage - Green - Find products in this colour | Dulux

Discover Dulux's Dried Sage paint a beautiful, distinctive and versatile shade of Green perfect for every room. Learn more at Dulux.

www.dulux.co.uk

I think Dried Sage painted on the accent wall, and Spiders Web for the rest would look best.
What colour are you doing the ceiling, brilliant white?
You could always be brave and do a wall Berry Pop!

Yeah, just white on the ceiling (and skirting), Spider's web looks OK, although possibly a bit cold - I'll pop to the shop and take a look in person

Think I'll give the berry a miss

 

[Haggisman]

I'd go for something light over dark, you want a light an airy room not something that sucks all the light out of it. Dark paint will also make the room feel smaller.

Thanks - yes, as soon as I went over the previous blue with the white, the room felt a lot bigger - I'm liking @Blackvault's suggestion of the green wall by the radiator and the rest of it a lighter colour. It gives some colour whilst (hopefully) not making the whole room too dark.

I'll go and have a look at some lighter colours at lunch

 

[Haggisman]

It's so hard to find the right colour, you just don't know until you put the tester paint on.

Yeah, even looking at the cards in store isn't ideal due to the difference in lighting. I actually ended up standing in the doorway with a handful of cards and they looked completely different in the daylight

I've got a couple of testers anyway, which at least looked nice when the cards were held side by side, we shall see!

Edit: even with the testers it can sometimes be hard to tell - a small 0.5m x 0.5m patch looks very different to the whole room!

 

[Haggisman]

None of the colours on the screen matched when I went to the shop, nor did they look 'correct' until they were on the wall.

That's understandable, since it depends on your screen calibration & settings

 

[Haggisman]

There's a few things you could do with that weird alcove - a number of quite deep shelves or what I would do is a pull out larder type storage thing, with lots of shelves - depending on your skills you could even make it hidden .

I'm probably going to go for shelves on the back wall - problem with the pull-out solution is the desk would be in the way, limiting the distance to pull it out.

The weird low bit could be a nice seat by fixing a cushion to it or a place to put a nice large plant to the ceiling.

Plant sounds good - I was previously using it for my printers (normal paper & 3D). Might raise it up and put some storage under though.

That strange wall cupboard with the socket, what's that? I'd be thinking of fitting one of those bathroom mirror PCs or at the least fitting a picture with a hinge and making it an ideal location for a safe lol.

The strange wall cupboard is going to be my comms/server cabinet. My microserver, IOT hubs etc. are all going in there, wall mounted on a Skadis pegboard. It has a network connection, plus the PoE connections to the cameras and wifi AP all come into it.

When we moved in, it had the control panel for the burglar alarm in there - but we replaced that with a smart alarm ages ago, and I figured I could put the space to better use

 

[Haggisman]

Can't go wrong with Grey, as boring as it is
This was Valspar paint from B&Q, I believe it was called "Nature Walk" but might be wrong.

That's nice, but maybe a bit too "clean" & modern compared to what I'm looking for - definitely want something a bit more natural feeling!

I like what you've done with the false wall though, very smart looking

so why wouldn't you have the desk on window side - to reduce reflections, provide a distraction+letting eyes relax WFH. ..
are you trying to preserve duel-purpose use as occasional bedroom.

Not keen on ambilight/backlighting behind monitor, but having low contrast with any background wall is less stressing.

I was under the impression that having the monitor at 90 degrees to the window was best - it's (mostly) South facing, so can get pretty bright in there mid-morning, so not really what I want to be looking at for half the day! I'm open to rearranging however, to make best use of space (as long as it's not detrimental to being able to work).

Does the window allow much light and seasonal change of light into the room?

Yes, as above, it gets pretty bright in the morning - the photos above are of natural light and artificial light (although it was in the afternoon, and this time of year natural sunlight is in short supply... )

 

[Haggisman]

Have a look at Dulux Pebble Shore as a starting point. It's fairly neutral. Don't think it will go with green though, but a starting point for sure.

That pebble shore is really nice actually - it's got a warm brown hint to it. Seems to go quite nicely with the sage

 

[Haggisman]

You've got a nice big room there with double patio doors, so plenty of light. I'd love a nice strong colour, but the mid blue it was before made the room feel quite small, due to the size and the one smallish window