Planning a Modern and Bright Creative Home Office {One Room Challenge Week 1}

See the full design for my modern and bright creative home office. I will be updating this space for the One Room Challenge and I can’t wait to share all of the design details with you!

Want more room design plans? Check out the powder room design plan, the master bedroom design plan, and the outdoor porch design plan.

I’m so excited because today is the kickoff of my very first One Room Challenge!

If you aren’t familiar with the One Room Challenge, it’s an interior design event that happens twice a year. Started and hosted by Linda from Calling It Home, the One Room Challenge is a room makeover challenge. Bloggers are given 6 weeks to complete a room makeover and share their progress every Thursday.

You can see all of the blogger participants and their projects in this link up.

I’ve always wanted to participate in the One Room Challenge, and this year I’m finally joining in! Today I’m sharing my plans for a modern and bright creative home office.

We’ve been in our townhome now for 3 years! And in that time, we’ve done a ton of projects. We’ve painted, decorated, and added elements to completely update different rooms. It’s been so fun to see our builder grade house transform into a home that we love!

One room that I’ve been so excited to work on, but just haven’t gotten to yet, is my home office.

Up until recently, I was working on my blog on a little desk in my living room. And any projects that I needed to do, like craft projects or decor projects, were done on our dining room table or kitchen island. Not exactly the best place to have all of my supplies strewn about.

Now, these places were perfectly fine for a season. But I was getting tired of having to drag out all of my supplies from storage every time I wanted to create something. And honestly, it was actually preventing me from making things most of the time. I just couldn’t find what I wanted and didn’t want to spend the time sorting through boxes and dragging everything out.

So I started dreaming of my home office. My own space to create, blog, and relax. Ben and I decided that the best space for my home office would be the basement.

If you aren’t familiar with our home (or if you are new joining me for the ORC — HI! ????????), we live in a townhome. You can take a quick tour of our home here.

So, because we are in a townhome, our basement is actually the first floor. And the first floor is actually the second floor and so on. The basement is a finished room and where we enter our home. But, it’s also one of the only places for extra storage that we have in our house.

When we moved in our basement looked like this. Look at all the space and possibilities!

But because it was a good space to store things in temporarily, our basement turned into this — eek!

Honestly, it’s a disaster! And this isn’t even as bad as it was before. This is when I consolidated everything into the center of the room so I could paint. I just couldn’t take the yellow walls anymore so I got a head start on the painting part.

After I painted I was left with a somewhat blank canvas.

This nook area of the basement is where I’ve been dreaming of putting a built-in desk. So for the ORC, I’m going to be making over this section of the room into my modern and bright creative home office.

The other sections of the room I’ll be sharing later on the blog. The whole space is just a little too big to tackle everything at once. 🙂

I was completely inspired by Vanessa from Decor Happy Blog and her ORC office makeover from Spring 2017. I kept coming back to it over and over again when I was getting ideas and inspiration for my own home office.

I’ve been researching and collecting ideas for this space for a long time now. So I’ve gotten a good sense of the direction that I want to go with this space.

Here’s the plan that I came up with:

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Sources

• Wall Paint — Valspar Tempered Gray
• Lower Cabinet Paint — Behr Rush Hour
• Upper Bookshelf Paint — Behr Swiss Cream
• Shutters — Home Depot
• Wallpaper — Spoonflower
• Desk Chair — Amazon
• Desk Top — DIY White Oak Desk Top (built by Ben ❤️)
• Pink Pillow — H&M Home
• Black and White Floral Pillow — McGee & Co.
• Gold Hardware (Large Pulls) — Amazon
• Gold Hardware (Small Pulls) — Amazon
• Table — Target
• Bookends — West Elm
• Globe — TJMaxx (similar World Market)
• Fern — Wayfair

I wanted a home office space to serve a few different purposes. I made a wish list of all the things I that my home office should include.

Wish List for My Home Office

Build-In Desk with lots of storage

I love the look of built-in desks. And I knew I was going to need a lot of storage for my craft supplies, office supplies, books, and other items. I wanted to have mostly closed off storage so that I could hide things away and keep the space looking clean

Open Shelves for Storage and Decorating

I also wanted to have a small part of the built-in desk to have open shelving. I really like the look of some open space for decorating and to have easy access to books.

A spot for my computer

I have a desktop iMac so I need a dedicated space where my computer will live.

A space where I can spread out and craft

I’ve always just had a desk space as the location for both working and crafting. But for my new home office, I wanted to include a large work surface table that I could dedicate to creating and crafting. That way it wouldn’t clutter up my workspace where my computer would be. 

Plantation Shutters

Since the basement is actually our first floor, it’s at the ground level. Our neighborhood has sidewalks right outside these windows and people are always walking by. I wanted a little bit of privacy for my office space, and plantation shutters are perfect for that

Decorative Accessories

To finish off the space, I’m really looking forward to choosing accessories and decorative items for my home office. In our home, I try to keep the decorations balanced — a little bit feminine here for me and masculine there for Ben. After all, it’s OUR home, not just my home. And I want it to reflect the combination of our styles.

But in my home office, I’m looking forward to adding some more bright, light, and girly items. I really want to make the space my own!

Shop the Post

So that’s the plan! Some of the One Room Challenge bloggers wait to start the room makeovers until the day that they share their plans. Then, they work on the room in real time over the 6 weeks. As you can see, I’ve already gotten a head start on the space. I painted the whole room and I’ve already completed a few projects before I decided I was going to join the One Room Challenge. But I’m excited to have this ORC timeline to pull everything together and create a cohesive space!

I hope you’ll follow along as we transform (a section of) our basement into my modern and bright creative home office! You can keep up with our progress in these posts:

Planning a Modern and Bright Creative Home Office {One Room Challenge Week 1} (You’re Here)

How to Build a Desk using IKEA SEKTION Cabinets {One Room Challenge Week 2}

The Best Removable Wallpaper Patterns

How to Install Removable Wallpaper {One Room Challenge Week 3}

6 Must-Have Painting Tools

How to Paint IKEA SEKTION Cabinets {One Room Challenge Week 4}

The Best Craft Room Tables

DIY Bookshelves for a Built-In Desk {One Room Challenge Week 5}

Modern and Bright Creative Home Office Reveal {One Room Challenge Week 6}