When designing your office space, it’s essential to ensure that everything – from the furniture in your workspace to the colours in your reception area – matches your brand identity. “Brand identity” can be an overcomplicated concept, especially in corporate spaces, but at its most basic, it refers to anything that can be associated with your brand. This could entail design choices such as a particular shade of colour or a certain font, or it could pertain to your values and what your company cares about, which could include sustainability and employee wellbeing, for example.
How to Ensure your Office Space Reflects your Brand Identity
When designing your office space, it’s essential to ensure that everything – from the furniture in your workspace to the colours in your reception area – matches your brand identity.
“Brand identity” can be an overcomplicated concept, especially in corporate spaces, but at its most basic, it refers to anything that can be associated with your brand.
This could entail design choices such as a particular shade of colour or a certain font, or it could pertain to your values and what your company cares about, which could include sustainability and employee wellbeing, for example.
In this article, we’ll take you through some of the ways you can ensure your office space reflects your brand identity, and why this is important.
Your Reception Space
There are two sides to making your office space reflect your brand identity: the client’s experience and the employee’s experience.
When it comes to your reception space, we’ll mostly be focussing on the client’s experience, as only reception staff will spend a lot of time in this area.
You can already begin to weave in your brand identity at your reception space. Using the same colour scheme as your logo and website could be a good idea, or ensuring your interior design suits your company’s aesthetic.
For example, if you run a clean-cut and professional architecture company, by having a minimalist reception space with neutral colours, you can establish your brand identity.
Hygiene in your Office
Another way you can present your brand identity and establish your company as trusted professionals in your industry is by ensuring all areas of your workspace – from the reception to the office – are clean and hygienic.
This is especially pertinent for workplaces in which hygiene is essential, including dentists, hospitals, gyms and more.
By maintaining and cleaning your office or workplace often, you can therefore keep to your brand identity of being the trusted go-to company in your industry.
Colour Schemes
As we mentioned above, using the same colour schemes as you have on your logo and website can help you reflect your brand identity in your reception area.
This is also the case for your office.
Depending on your logo, certain colours could boost employees’ mood and productivity, while others can make them feel calmer and less stressed.
For clients visiting your office space, they’ll begin to associate these colours with your brand.
In fact, studies show that colours can improve brand recognition by up to 80%. This is because our brains are more likely to remember colours, shapes and other visual things than words and numbers.
Office Layout
Something that could reflect your brand identity – which not many people may consider – is the layout of your office.
As well as your office’s design, the layout can also bring out your brand and what makes your company special.
For example, if one of your values is collaboration, you can exemplify this by setting up group working spaces in your office, as well as the regular workstations and desks.
Alternatively, if your brand is well-known for prioritising employee wellbeing, you could create napping spaces and relaxation stations around your office to ensure your office reflects this value.
Meeting Rooms
Similarly to office layout, if your company is well-known for providing a high standard of customer service or relationship management, a good way to manage this is by holding meetings in a separate, purpose-made room.
This helps to ensure that you can hold meetings away from the rest of the office, which is ideal if you’re discussing sensitive or important matters.
In addition, using a separate meeting room will ensure you can talk to your clients, customers and stakeholders without any background distractions.
Furniture in your Office
When it comes to reflecting your brand and its identity in your office, furniture can actually play a big role.
As well as ensuring the furniture you choose meets your colour scheme, you should also be certain that it suits the overall aesthetic of your office and your brand.
For example, if your business is more informal, comfortable chairs and sofas wouldn’t look out of place.
However, if your company is more professional, it’s a good idea to choose more traditional and uniform workstations and furniture, to suit your brand identity.
Office Soft Furnishings
Another thing to consider as part of making your office space reflect your brand vision and identity.
From essentials like rugs and carpets to curtains and blinds, several items fall under the category of soft furnishings.
As with the other design elements in your office, your soft furnishings should adhere to your colour scheme to ensure everything works well together.
In addition, the amount of soft furnishings you use generally depends on the aesthetic of your office and your overall brand identity.
If your brand is fun and colourful, for example, a maximalist office with lots of different soft furnishings such as rugs, pouffes and bean bags would suit your company’s overall image.
However, if your brand and company is more professional and formal, a more minimalist approach to soft furnishings may be the way to go.
Walls: Paint and Prints
When you’re updating your office to reflect your brand more, one of the first places to start is by updating the walls.
One of the ways to do this is by painting your walls to adhere to your chosen colour scheme, which can be achieved by either painting feature walls or painting all the walls the same colour, depending on your preference.
In addition, you could hang prints in your office, or have wall-to-wall photos on feature walls to demonstrate the work you’ve done, or to show your team members.
Office Plants
If your brand identity is more relaxed and modern, it might be a good idea to consider bringing the outside in by having plants in your office.
As well as contributing to your office’s aesthetic and reflecting your company’s overall brand identity, office plants are also helpful when it comes to purifying the air in your workspace.
In fact, several different plants are known to remove toxins from the air, so there are many to choose from, depending on the style of your office.
The Impact of Reflecting Brand Identity for Employees
When it comes to reflecting your company’s brand identity in your office, this can have several different effects on your employees.
For example, the colour scheme of your brand – and therefore the colour scheme of your office – could impact the mood of your employees. For instance, while blue is known to be a relaxing colour, green helps boost creativity.
The Impact of Reflecting Brand Identity for Clients
It’s essential that your office reflects your brand identity, especially when you have clients or customers, or even new leads.
This is because – as we explained above – people are more likely to remember colours than words and numbers, so getting clients to associate a certain colour with your brand means that, whenever they see that colour, your clients will be reminded of your company.
In turn, this means that your clients always have your business at the top of their mind, meaning they’re more likely to engage with your company.
How you Can Make your Office Reflect your Brand Identity
So, in this article, we’ve had a look at some of the ways in which you can ensure your office reflects your brand identity, and why this is important.
Essentially, when considering your office design, it’s important to keep in mind what will make new clients come to you and what will make existing ones return.
In addition, there are lots of different ways you can make an impact on your employees’ moods, productivity and wellbeing.
This is all important to keep in mind when it comes to your office design strategy. The general idea is to ensure that your office reflects your brand, your values, and what sets you apart from other companies in your industry.