4 Key elements you need to incorporate into your Home Office Renovation – Week 7 Spring 2022 One Room Challenge

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Your home office renovation is wrapping up and the finish line is in sight! There are 4 key elements you need to incorporate into your office design to achieve a tailored finished look.

Week 7 is here! I can't believe there's only 1 week until reveal day! This home office renovation was my first big project. I've never renovated an entire room, start to finish by myself. It's been quite the experience: extremely rewarding and humbling to say the least! Week 8 will focus on cleaning up and decorating, which is my favorite part!

This week I focused on finishing touches. There are certain aspects of each space that I feel are crucial to the vibe of the room. The 4 key elements to finishing my home office renovation included adding custom curtains, upgrading the light fixture, cleaning up stray wires and reworking the placement of my wall decor. This blog post will help you create that final to do list for your home office renovation. It will show you how some simple upgrades and changes really transform a space.

Finishing Touches for your Home Office Renovation

1. Custom Curtains

Never underestimate the impact custom curtains can make! I have to admit, this addition to my home office is the one item that really made me feel like I have a put together room!

Curtarra made the process so easy! It’s all on their website! I got some free samples to start! Matching colors and seeing the fabrics in person was crucial for me! When it came to picking the fabric, my main priority was color. I knew I would keep them open most of the time so black out curtains weren't a priority. My vision was to get a solid color in either Navy or Light blue and double it up with a sheer white curtain! The sheer curtain would provide all the light, but a bit of privacy when needed as I have a lot of neighbors that walk back during the day. The solid color would complement the busier wallpaper I have on my bookshelves from Love vs. Design.

I got the Flora linen semi sheer curtain and the Mia kids curtain, unlined in baby blue! While it says kids, it’s perfection for my office and I don’t get kid vibes in here.

I did just over 2x the fullness with 10 inches on either side of the window! You can choose the color grommets and I went with gold to match my curtain rod. I selected for the curtains to just dust the floor, which I think is the perfect length for this space. They send tie backs and added the beautiful gold button for the tie backs to my Mia curtain! There are other options available if grommets aren’t your style! These curtains match my wallpaper and room decor completely and the quality is impeccable!!

Check out www.Curtarra.com. Use code CRISSY for 12% off AND you’ll get 2 random free pillow covers!

2. Light Fixture Upgrade

Builder grade anything is typically not my style. The builder grade boob light is one of the worst items. And is it just me or do builders put in the harshest lightbulbs?

Needless to say, it needed to be replaced pronto! I love the look of the sputnik chandeliers and have one in my dining room and knew I wanted something with a similar aesthetic in here. This light from overstock (that can also be found at other stores) was everything this home office needed! It's the modern gold 4-light globe chandelier clear glass ball sputnik ceiling light!

I loved how the lines in the light were similar to my new brushed bronze square bar drawer pulls from Rockler! The color of this gold light is much closer to the brushed bronze color of my pulls.

I am a true DIYer and have changed many a fixture over the years, but please hire an electrician for any electrical work if you aren't knowledgeable or comfortable. And even if it is your 100th time doing this, please use caution and be safe!

3. Cord Solutions

We live in an age where electronics rule our lives! With my desk being placed in the middle of the room, I definitely needed a way to wrangle all of those cords and tidy up the look of the space. Doing this small thing does make a huge difference in the aesthetic of the space!

Several options were considered, but I ultimately wanted to go with the most budget friendly solution. I had extra velcro that I used to attach my power strips to the back of my nightstands, so I used that to secure the power strip to my desk. This is the exact 2 x 4 inch velcro that I purchased and swear by!

Getting those cords off the ground has really made a huge difference and makes the space feel more clean and organized. It may not be pretty from the inside room angle, but when you walk in, it's perfection!

4. Home Office Wall Art

Last, but not least on my list of must have elements for your home office renovation is home office wall art! This can be an assortment of items, as minimal as your framed diploma or a bulletin board and as large as a gallery wall!

I have several places in my home office that I placed wall art. If i'm honest, I'm a bit of a pack rat and I'm quite sentimental. My home office has a travel theme. My job is travel based and pre-covid I travelled 60-80% of the time. While I'm spending a lot more time in my office these days, I still love everything travel.

To add to this, I wanted my home office renovation to include items from my grandma and grandpa. My cousin Jason created these amazing collages with items from my grandparents basement. They did a fair amount of traveling and collected odds and ends from their travels. Items like drink stirs, match books, coasters, game tickets flooded their basement.

My cousin had the fantastic idea to gather these items and frame them and then gave one to family members. With his idea, I gathered some additional items and made another one of these display boxes. Bottom right of the gallery wall is the one Jason made and the bottom left is the shadow box I made. My grandparents had signs and flags and other items and you can see those on my bulletin board. That happy hour flag in the corner was always one of my favorites and I framed it with an extra frame I had lying around, though I need to neaten it up a bit!

I couldn't not keep my scratch map and my home map in my office, so those were placed on my other 2 walls. I'm still playing around with things, but I think overall it's turned out pretty great! I'll still play around with things more over the next week, but for now, I'm happy with it!

Tips to a Cohesive Gallery Wall

It seems like a daunting task at first, but I laid everything out on the floor. This helped tremendously and saved my walls quite a few nails! You want items to be cohesive. Try to keep spacing fairly even around the items. I recommend grabbing similar items in groups of 2 or 3. If you have black frames- try to have at least 2-3 other black frames. Make sure that colors can be seen within 2 or 3 other pieces. Don't rush this process and play around with it! You've got this!

Don't forget to continue to check out all of the One Room Challenge rooms! There are so many creative DIY projects in the making! I can hardly wait until reveal day next week!!

4 Key elements you need to incorporate into your Home Office Renovation – Week 7 Spring 2022 One Room Challenge