Shared spaces become appealing to both men and women when they incorporate a thoughtful balance of both masculine and feminine elements. This home office has a cool, masculine palette reinforced by wide awning-stripe fabric and chocolate tones, yet maintains a feminine softness with luxurious silk fabrics, pale blue accents, and a delicately patterned area rug. With well-appointed amenities, both Mr. and Mrs. are equally at home in this office!
Wallpaper is generally intended to run vertically from floor to ceiling, but no hard rule says you can’t run it in any direction. You may want to see what happens when you turn a wallpaper on its side. Some of my favourite wide-striped wallpapers actually look better when installed horizontally instead of vertically. If you are trying to achieve a more contemporary look, a wide stripe is an effective way to add graphic interest to your walls.
For a departure from monochromatic bookcases, I painted the beadboard panelling on the back of the bookshelves in delicate robin’s-egg blue as a reference to the fabric scheme, and also as a playful nod to the framed antique engravings of eggs. Instead of an entire wall composed of shelves, you might want to keep the centre section open to allow a place to hang a treasured piece of art. It takes far more books than you might think to fill your shelves completely, and the variation might be a welcome breather.
Instead of installing bookshelves that are open from floor to ceiling, consider a breakfront configuration with doors on the lower section. This division between open and closed storage allows you to make the lower section deeper to accommodate boxes and bulky items and also creates a useful ledge at table height.