Sunday, January 22, 2012

Planning An Office Fitout

While an office fitout can do wonders for the physical appearance of a business, it can prove to be a highly stressful and frustrating experience for the employees in charge of completing it. By following the below tips, you can rest assured that your office facelift will completed to the highest standard for the best price.

  • Set project goals and write them into a list, as this will help you to ensure that each of your goals is achieved.
  • Keep a checklist with all of the requirements your office fitout needs to meet and the corresponding timeline, as this will help you to keep the project organized.
  • Don’t compromise on quality, especially as there is such a wide range of furniture and fixtures available at different prices these days. Remember that higher quality pieces at higher prices may be cheaper in the long run, as they will require replacement less often.
  • Include updates to your technology in your office fitouts budget, as it can be more cost effective to do all this at the same time than in stages.
  • Do your research to ensure that you are choosing the best pieces of furniture and the most appropriate design to your workplace.
  • Address safety at the very beginning of your fitout (such as fire extinguishers, sprinklers, smoke detectors, etc) to ensure your staff’s safety comes first.
  • Talk to a professional, as they can actually help you to maximize your space and time for an affordable price that beats the DIY job.

Wouldn’t you just love to get your office fitout done and dusted as fast as possible? By using the above tips when it comes to planning an office fitout for your business, you can help to ensure the process is as smooth and painless for all those involved.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Have you Considered using Drapes as well as Office Partitions?

When you think of office partitions does your mind instantly leap to hard, rigid and uninviting structures? Solid room dividers are by no means the only option for dividing up a work space, indeed, some alternatives may serve your purposes much better. Drapes or curtains hung inside can make a fantastic space dividing solution as they block out visual distractions, muffle excess sound and give a space a lovely, luxurious feel.

While solid office partitions require a builder to install them properly, drapes are so easy to hang up inside you could do it yourself and save on your fitout budget. If you trim the fabric to the right length and width, it is easy to get a clean, professional look with enough gathers to make the drapes look substantial, but not so much that the office partition takes up too much space.

For a beautiful effect in your workplace, you could consider installing subtle down lights just above your office partitions, creating a whimsical play of light on the fabric and adding extra healthy lighting to the workplace. If light is at a premium in your workplace, try using light and transparent office partitions to provide a degree of privacy without closing the space in too much.

If you require more solid room dividers in your workplace for privacy and sound proofing, then drapes are still a good candidate for informal areas such as the kitchen and break area. You can install curtains inside to create a beautiful and functional division between the 'serious' and the 'fun' sides of your workplace.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Why You Need To Choose Office Fitouts Carefully

Being an owner of office means bearing all the responsibilities, including choosing office fitouts. It may seem a petty job for an office owner, but not actually if you realize its importance. Often, people fail to estimate the significance of choosing right office furniture and end up losing clients. Fitouts in an office make an interior that can either leave lasting impression on your clients or may do completely opposite.

Stylish and high quality office furniture creates a positive environment for both of your customers and employees. Yes, beautiful surrounding motivates employees to work well, make them happy and hence help them to be productive. Beauty obviously matters, but comfort and utility are also important factors that cannot be ignored. If you get furniture items that are designed exactly up to the work requirement of the staff, it will help them to manage their work appropriately. The ease of management means comfort and comfort means increased productivity. This is the edge of satisfaction for both the employee and the employer.

From business perspective, choosing right office furniture is very necessary. Reason, your clients often assess your business and your personality on the basis of the office interior you have. You can create a beautiful office interior by feeding it with stylish, attractive and delicately  designed office fitouts. However, you can still miss that class if you fail to meet the quality of furniture, regardless of the fact that if you are buying used or fresh office fitouts.

Monday, December 12, 2011

How to Design Office Fitouts for Collaborative Work

A collaborative working process allows people to swap ideas creatively to produce solutions that are more inspired and innovative than usual. Collaborative work can help any business, but it may not thrive in a conventional office fitout environment. For employees to produce creative work, they need to be comfortable in their work space and be able to communicate easily with their co-workers.

An office fitout fit for collaborative work needs a space in which employees can relax and discuss new ideas in a supportive environment. Consider partitioning off a space in your workplace to use specifically for informal brainstorming, using couches, armchairs and a coffee table to encourage a casual atmosphere.

Alternatively, you can try tearing down some of the existing partitioning in your workplace to make the whole space more inviting and open. By using less partitioning walls in your office fitouts you can encourage employees to move around more frequently, talking to different people who can offer new and different ideas.

To further inspire employees with your space design, try including stimulating artwork on the walls of your workplace. It is important to design an office fitout full of texture and colour when creating an environment perfect for collaboration between employees.

It is important to remember, however, that every employee also needs a space to concentrate on independent work in any business. This means that your space design needs to find a balance between opening up the space and controlling noise levels and visual distractions. Finding this balance will involve a mixture of good office fitout design and altering the space with experience.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Top Four Suspended Ceiling Trends

Suspended ceilings are a great solution for improving the acoustics and insulation of any office space, but all too often they appear dull and cheap, making them a significant visual eyesore. Luckily, there are many things you can do to make your suspended ceilings more interesting and useful.
  1. Fabric Coverings
  2. Many dropped roof configurations consist of tiles with a thick layer of insulation and a thinner vinyl layer that faces down into the room. This thin vinyl layer can be replaced with a heat proof and flame resistant fabric in any colour or pattern for a more decorative effect.
  3. Extra Storage
  4. One idea picked up recently in office fitouts is using the suspended ceiling to act as a host to extra storage space in the workplace. You can either store very infrequently used items above the suspended ceilings or mount storage boxes on secure rails underneath the ceilings.
  5. Light Shades
  6. Although it is common practice to simply use fluorescent lighting lying flush with the vinyl tiles in the roof of an office, a more interesting effect can be made by using light shades hanging from the roof. Alternatively you can use discrete down lights for an elegant look.
  7. Quirky Colours
  8. Most office roofs are grey, white or beige, but have you ever consider using a more vibrant colour higher up to brighten up your workplace? The suspended roof can be a great place to paint a bright and unconventional colour as it is not as noticeable as the walls but still has a considerable effect on the overall feel of the space

Friday, November 25, 2011

Smart Office Fitouts For Professional Work Ambience

A workplace is incomplete if it misses the professional ambience. It is vital to create surrounding that inspires employees to work and perform his best. A goofed up workstations or unmanageable documents and stationary items obstruct their working and plunge their interest. Therefore, the concept of latest office fitouts was launched. These furniture items are specially designed for workplace and hence are extremely comfortable and functional for practical use. Their designs that are planned after considering the type of business the company is into and the job the employees who will be using them. Such information gives a clear picture of the requirement and idea of how the furniture items can be best designed. Moreover they also save space.

Space is one of the biggest constraints in corporate offices today. After a certain period of time every business grows, resulting into influx of papers and the unmanageable number of employees. This in turn raises the need of larger offices. However, it is not always possible to buy or hire larger office floor and shift there in every few years. But, you have a solution of custom designed office fitouts that are designed and planned considering the space available and the possible future requirements.

Besides, the office fitouts are very stylish and elegant, yet maintain the professional environment. You may come across a great assortment of designs and colors for custom designed furniture, which would not only facelift the look of the interior, but will also utilize every corner of the office to the optimum.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Office Fitouts – Diversifying Its Scope

Office fitouts available today come in huge range of variety, each with stylish design, practically useful features and meant to fit in space constraint offices. Certainly, expectation rises when such diversity emerges on the way. No doubt, they are capable to fulfill the ever increasing requirement of corporate offices. Today, material used to make commercial purpose furniture items is not limited to timber wood only. Metal, plastic and fabric materials are coming up as hot replacement to it, especially for chairs. Using such materials also opens up  scope for colorful office fitouts.

This is not chairs which taste versatility in looks, but partitions, desks, workstations, joineries and many other similar fitouts have modified into modern furniture. Achieving modernity has helped these furniture items over a time to provide comfort and longevity. For instance, office chairs are designed with adjustable seat height and back to provide right sitting posture, so as to avoid back aches and other health issues. Being made of metal and high quality plastic, they last very long.

Another considerable factor of modern office furniture is the increased functional value. As corporate industries vary with their requirements, commercial furniture items are designed accordingly. Many commercial furniture manufacturing companies provide the option of custom-made items that are made keeping the space and individual requirements. Doesn’t matter if it is a big office or large, office fitouts are generously furnished to make them practically useful. No doubt, office fitouts today are diversifying its scope in terms of design, color, functionality and health.