It’s not uncommon for many offices to be windowless these days, there are only four sides to any building. This can be a bummer if you love natural light, but that doesn’t mean a windowless office can’t be decorated to be inviting!
Sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got. In this article, we have a bunch of ways you can decorate your office that has no windows.
You can take a boring windowless office space to an inviting and effective place to work with these recommendations.
A lot of these recommendations should be refined to your specific style. Not every decoration will fit everyone’s taste. Think about the select few items that resonate the most with you, and commit to exploring those options!
Key Windowless Office Ideas
- First, improve your office lighting. Choose desk lights and accent lights with adjustable color temperatures so you can dial in the perfect lighting.
- Paint your walls a bright and airy color and use items like mirrors to open up the space.
- Bring some nature indoors with plants and artwork. These customize your space and make it absolutely yours.
- Use vertical space to open up your desk space and make your office feel airy and roomy.
Improve Windowless Office Lighting
Lighting a windowless workspace is the first step here. We are robbed of the sun, so we need to work on replacements.
If your office is lit with bleak fluorescent light tubes, you should focus on introducing alternative light sources.
Those large white lights are not bad when they are combined with natural light. But if you don’t have windows, those lights won’t be doing us any good.
Somehow these lights can suck the life out of people. They definitely don’t inspire creativity for me.
Enhance Your Main Light
Natural light is always a bit warmer than the cold fluorescent lights in most offices. Warm lighting will always provide a more inviting ambiance to a room. Too cozy could be a bad thing for some people, so choose what light temperature works for you.
I like to replicate a slightly warm natural light source at my own desk. It reminds me of the sun that I’m missing in my windowless office!
I am currently using the BenQ ScreenBar Halo (review here), which has an adjustable color temperature so I can get the perfect warmth at my workspace. It also takes up zero desk space which boosts my desk aesthetics.
Introduce your favorite lighting feature with the correct light temperature. A nice table lamp can work wonders when compared to large ceiling lights. The light is a little more focused on you and your work.
Add Accent Lighting
Accent lighting is all over my home office. Check out my current light setup in the image below. As you can tell, there is no natural light in this image. Just my own lights.
I have an RGB LED strip behind my table. This way I don’t see any LEDs, but I have a beautiful gradient of light across the wall behind my desk.
The LED strip can change colors, but I keep it at a nice warm sunset orange. It fills in all the little shadows on the backside of my desk. I absolutely love it!
Accent lighting comes in all shapes and sizes. For example, a low-powered table lamp could pass as an accent light. These also act as bias lights that can reduce eye strain from your monitor. Instead of a bright monitor in your face, you have an evenly lit environment.
I also have a set of Govee Light Bars behind my monitor, these are controlled from my phone and cast any color I can think of against my wall. Check out my review of the Govee Light Bars here. These resulted in a huge reduction in eye strain for me.
Here are a few more recommended accent lights. These are all great to add light and make up for the color you don’t see from looking out of a window. The RGB options offer way more color than you will see outside any window.
Paint Walls With Bright & Inviting Colors
The color of your office walls can make a huge effect on how inviting and aesthetically pleasing.
Lighter colors will open up the space and make it seem like you actually have more room! Lighter colors reflect more light which means the light sources you already have will illuminate more than before!
No need to go with bland white walls though. A light shade of green, gray, or blue can add character to your office and have all of the lighting and space-opening benefits.
Mirrors Add Space To Your Office
Mirrors are a great way to make a small office look way bigger than they usually are. This is a point we made in our dedicated article on how to make a small office look bigger.
This is also a great way to reflect your improved lighting sources that we touched on earlier.
Decorate With Pictures & Art
Though you don’t have windows, you can still have magnificent scenery. Even better scenery than what is actually outside.
Adding pictures of landscapes, art, or even loved ones can help you forget that you have no windows. If you had windows, you actually wouldn’t have anywhere to hang a decent-sized picture.
I would highly recommend metal prints if you are printing landscape scenery. The colors really pop out of metal prints. They are pretty much as glossy as images can get.
Just be sure to place your art somewhere that isn’t prone to a ton of reflections.
Calendars and digital photo frames also work very well here.
Personalized Office Decor
A great way to liven up an office desk is to add some good old office decor.
Don’t think of office decor in the traditional sense. Think about things that would make you happy, specifically.
If you are a hardcore sports fan, you can have some football or tennis-themed items on your desk. Are you obsessed with Formula 1 racing? Keep a small model F1 car on your desk. It can serve as an icebreaker too if any other fans spot it.
If you have souvenirs from a vacation that look great on a desk, keep them in your office! It will keep you going through your work day and will help you plan the next vacation.
Don’t just search on Amazon for office decor. Think about little things that make you happy and introduce that to your desk. That will keep your desk unique to you and make it unquestionably your space.
Introduce Some Nature – Plants!
One thing I miss about having an office with a window is all the green.
I used to have a small farm outside of my office window. When I changed jobs and didn’t have that window anymore, my solution was to bring the plants inside my office. This was a huge game-changer!
Introducing natural colors into the office with plants just made it feel like I had a little piece of the outdoors with me.
If you don’t want the responsibility of taking care of plants and watering them, artificial plants can get the job done and are very convincing.
If you accept some responsibility for living plants, try to go for ones that don’t need a ton of sunlight. I personally have a snake plant at my desk. They are SO easy to take care of. Here are more plants that are easy to take care of in a windowless office.
If you really want a plant that requires some sunlight check out our article on desk lamps that are good for growing plants.
Add More Color
The outdoors is always filled with colors. We already talked about introducing plants and accent lights that can be different colors.
There are more ways to add color! Think about all of your desk accessories. Whether it’s your pencil cup or a folder organizer.
If they are just a plain metal color or black, think about changing them up. I would pick a color palette you enjoy, and stick with it.
These can make being inside your home office or corporate office way more inviting. We are getting further and further from the bleak windowless office aesthetic with these tips.
Make Use Of Vertical Space
Adding some furniture to your office can give it a whole new dimension. The glass is half full here. The advantage we have without windows is that we can add furniture and not block any views!
For example, shelves are a great addition to a plain open wall. These can give you an elevated place to keep your plants, office decor, books, and so much more.
This also lets you be very space efficient by using vertical space. You essentially convert a small flat space on your desk to a multilevel storage/display area.
This opens up space elsewhere in your office which can make your office feel bigger.
Don’t want to install wall shelves? A stand-alone bookshelf is a great alternative to use that vertical space without having to install anything on your walls.
If you really like making use of air space, check out our article on grid wall organizers, yet another game changer.
Introduce an “Energy” Section
I always lose steam towards the end of the day. Or right away on a Monday morning. Maybe all mornings. No windows mean we can’t get our energy from the world outside or from the heat of the sun anymore.
An energy corner on your desk can give you a huge boost. This can be a corner with some coffee, tea, and even snacks like energy bars and fruits.
Be careful with the snacks if you have self-control issues like me. You can restrict them to healthy snacks if you really want to limit the snacking.
Keeping snacks and beverages right next to you lets you get a nice boost whenever you need it.
