Posture People HQ gets a facelift!
You might recall that a year or so ago, Posture People upped sticks from our showroom in Seven Dials to our beachfront warehouse just up the road from Hove Lagoon. As soon as we moved in, we hit the ground running, and whilst we made sure we had our pick of ergonomic furniture, we didn’t feel that our office truly reflected our company culture.
In addition to unashamedly showing off our beautiful new workspace, we wanted to share our experience for anyone that is looking to create their dream offices in the near future.
Plan your budget wisely
When we initially moved, the furniture was our highest priority from the outset (could you expect anything else from self-confessed chair geeks?). We spent a good portion of our time picking our favourite pieces, ensuring that every member of the team had a standing desk and their personal preference of ergonomic chair.
We then carefully space planned every piece to make the most of floor space, our natural light and ensure space for growth. This initial investment has already stood the test of 104 work weeks and serves us just as well to this day.
When you are accounting for your own costs, make sure you factor in all the hidden costs (even the bottles of wine for everyone that has helped you move) and keep the mindset of “how will this work for us 3 years down the line”; it could end up saving you a lot of money in the long run.
Get an outside opinion
Sometimes designing for yourselves can be the hardest thing to do. Even with the invaluable insight from our creative team, when you want to make a space work for everyone, an external opinion can really help you to bring all of your ideas together and make it cohesive and practical.
We decided to enlist the help of Brighton based interior design expert Nicola Gobat. With oodles of experience working with workspaces in and around Brighton, we’ve admired Nicola’s recent input on the Propellernet offices.
As well as being a fountain of ideas, Nicola was also able to create a cohesive theme and colour palette to reflect our beautiful seaside setting and slightly industrial aesthetic.
It’s worth mentioning that having someone to oversee a project on this scale helped us to minimise disruption to the team and push the deadline for completion.
Include the team
During the process, we encouraged the team to make individual Pinterest boards and found common themes reoccurring. In doing this, we knew that we could make our space a bit more relaxed and homey whilst making some extra space for breakaway meetings.
It was important for us to make everyone feel included so that we knew that the space work for everyone (apart from our director David when we vetoed the Storm Trooper wallpaper…)
Create a clear plan
Visualising our ideas as a 3D space plan helped with every stage of the project. From picking new pieces (and making sure they fit perfectly) to choosing the colour of each individual wall, our 3D plan ensured clear and concise direction throughout.
Our lighting expert Terrance John from Life Light Studios played a vital part in helping us to decide the lighting in our offices. After his survey, we decided to ditch the slightly clinical strip lighting and choose a more human centric energy efficient LED lighting scheme.
In addition to this, we also played around with colour palette and stapled up swatches for a week or so to make sure that we were happy with the colour at all times of the day. A grey that we initially fell in love with seemed too dark and dull when there was less natural light.
Work from home where possible
With a watchful eye from our interior designer and our benevolent office manager Rachelle, we were able to plan out our time efficiently to ensure as little disruption to our schedules to the office.
However, refurbishment inevitably comes with a fair share of noise and sawdust so where possible it was best for us to work from home. Thanks to our new IT company Computer Eyez, this was put into practice easily as we can now all work efficiently from home whilst staying connected.
With special thanks to…
Furniture – Posture People | Love your workspace
Our interior designer – Nicola Gobat
Our mezzanine builders – Build my home
Terrance John – For your outstanding insight on lighting design
The Posture People team – for putting up with the sawdust and being brilliant as always
Our Directors Jo & David – for creating a space that we all love to work in
