The home office is a genuinely new room in most houses, and we are still working out how to treat it. Too often it ends up the most neglected space in the home, a spare-room desk against bare plaster, as though work were something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
That is a missed opportunity, because the room you work in shapes how you feel while you work. A space with warmth and character is simply a nicer place to spend eight hours than a corporate blank. There is also the small matter of the camera: for many of us the home office wall is seen by colleagues and clients every single day, which makes it, in effect, a backdrop worth dressing.
"The room you work in shapes how you feel while you work, which is reason enough to decorate it well."
Rise in Burgundy, from Arte's Ombre, wraps a desk in a single deep colour and nothing else. Petit Fleurs and Sibylla, both by Boråstapeter, are studies rather than offices, which is rather the point, and Ruta, from Sandberg's Essentials, is the quietest of the four.
Rise, Burgundy by Arte
Petit Fleurs, Light Beige by Boråstapeter
Sibylla, Light Green by Boråstapeter
Ruta, Terracotta by Sandberg
Pattern That Helps You Think
The useful question is what you want the room to do for you. If focus is the priority, lean towards the calming and the restful: a soft botanical, a textured neutral, a gentle design that brings a little nature to a screen-bound day. Blenets Check in Oatmeal, by Henry Holland for Harlequin, and Golden Trellis both give the eye somewhere steady to land between tasks.
If your work is creative and you want energy, a bolder colour or geometric can genuinely lift and spark, provided it sits behind you rather than in your eyeline. Isidor in Dark Red and Evesham Deer are the braver end. For the video call, a design with some depth and personality reads far better on camera than a flat white void.
Blenets Check, Oatmeal by Harlequin
Golden Trellis, Beige by Boråstapeter
Isidor, Dark Red by Boråstapeter
Evesham Deer, Elysian by Sanderson
"Calm to help you focus, or bold to spark ideas: decide what the room needs to do, then choose."
How and Where to Use It
Most home offices are modest, a box room, a corner of a bedroom, a nook under the stairs, and pattern is a gift in a small working space, bringing character where there is little architecture to admire. Clan's Check, from Coordonné's Cotswolds, does exactly that, taking a desk nook and making it deliberate. Strawberry Thief in Wine, from Colours of Morris, is the opposite approach: give the whole room over to one great archive pattern.
Archie, from Casadeco's Carnaby Street, is a check drawn at desk scale, while Mineral Cloud is closer to a plain and will not compete with a screen.
Strawberry Thief, Wine by Morris & Co
Archie, Carnaby Street by Casadeco
Mineral Cloud by Harlequin
Clan's Check, Bone by Coordonné
A single papered wall behind the desk is often all you need, doubling neatly as the call backdrop. Kryddhyllan is a working wall in exactly that sense, Plaster in Taupe, from A S Creation's Cosiness, the most neutral backdrop here, and Mandya in Sky Blue and Pagoda the two that read best on camera: one a texture, one a drawn landscape with somewhere for the eye to go.
Kryddhyllan, Dark Multi by Boråstapeter
Plaster, Taupe by A S Creation
Mandya, Sky Blue by Arte
Pagoda, Blue by Tres Tintas
Keep the rest simple so the room stays calm to work in, and choose a design you will be happy to look at, and be seen in front of, day after day. Order a sample and judge it in your working light, including the artificial light of a winter afternoon. Browse the home office collection and feature wall ideas to begin. Get it right and the home office stops feeling like a compromise, and starts feeling like the best desk you have ever had.
