People used to type until Word Perfect showed up. And do you remember when having a fax in your office was a sense of modernity? Times have certainly changed considerably. Faxes have long disappeared from the medium office landscape. Typewriters have been replaced by computers, replacing them with laptops and tablets. Similarly, office furnishings have changed significantly over time. On this blog, we will talk about office furniture trends from yesterday to today.
A little history.
The rise of the “office” as we know it today has been a very vague process. What we can say with certainty is it all started with people who were doing paperwork. Think of the monks of the Middle Ages who spent days copying texts with graceful letters. Modern office space developed further as accountancy grew in importance.
Offices in the 19th century began to look like today’s offices. During this period of industrialization, clerical work became increasingly important in society. Since then, office space has experienced steady growth and has become the workplace we know today.
Wide Open Spaces and Heavy Offices during the 20th Century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, offices were mainly large open spaces filled with heavy wooden cylinder countertops. Office furniture was rarely considered, as office furnishings were mostly similar to those in schools. Most of the employees were men in suits. Coming to the office in casual clothing was certainly not an option at that time. An increasing number of women have also been working in the office since the 20th century. They serve primarily as secretaries and deputies.
Standing at your desk is perceived as the most recent and rapidly growing trend. However, that situation was already fairly normalized in the twentieth century. For example, you could often find so-called typewriter stalls in the office: a high table that had to be typed while getting up. Another interesting difference is that the CEO was often the only individual in a company that had their own private office space.
Grey and Tarnished
In the 1950s and 1960s, heavy wood usage decreased and was replaced by steel. The offices of this period are lighter, but also become much duller in terms of colour palette. Looking back at this period now, many people would describe the style of office furniture in those days as dull and boring.
The appearance of the offices was clearly not a priority for the time being. Instead, the convenience of office furniture was found to be the most important. Consider, for instance, large bulky filing cabinets and bright fluorescent lighting. Definitely convenient, but not really beneficial in terms of creating a nice environment in the office space.
Throughout these years, the famous American cubicles were invented. You can recognise these cabins from any American movie or series that takes place in the office. A cubicle is a small, compartmentalized space suitable for a person, usually with a desk, a computer and a desk chair. Paradoxically, these seemingly impersonal cubicles were designed to meet employees’ needs for personal space and privacy. However, they have often been used to achieve the exact contrary, namely: housing many employees on very few square meters in order to increase productivity.
More attention to Colour within the Office.
During the 1970s, the power of colourful flowers and furnishings became the trend. Thankfully for all office workers, this color invasion has also erupted in business and office design. Finally, the annoying grey interiors have been replaced by bright and vibrating office furniture in several colours.
The telephone line was also established during this period, which enabled office employees to have a telephone on their desk in addition to a typewriter. Unfortunately, this colourful revival only lasted a decade. By the 1980s, many office spaces had begun using brown colours. But the 1980’s brought us one of the most famous inventions of the time: the fax machine.
Private Workspaces
Until the 1990s, office workers worked mainly in a large open office space. Only the American cubicules departed from this concept. But in the 1990s, employees were increasingly given private workspaces. Large open office spaces disappeared and were replaced by private workspaces that gave employees more privacy, peace and space. On the other hand, a very important invention has been introduced: the personal computer. Many workers were given their own personal computers for the first time ever. Office furniture has also changed colour from the ’80s brown to elegant grey.
Back to Open Workspaces
We went into the next century. The popularity of privately owned workspaces during the 1990s did not last long. Many people have realized that these private workspaces, while offering silence and personal space, reduced cooperation and friendly contact among co-workers. As a result, open office spaces have returned to the 21st century.
These open work spaces have become a special hit among small businesses, now also known as ‘start-ups’. As well, the huge computer screens that many employees had on their desks are constantly being replaced with lightweight laptops that can be taken anywhere.
The Office of Today
We finally got to the modern offices that we are all familiar with today. While we recognize that open workspaces encourage collaboration, we have also seen that they can cause inconvenience due to ambient noise. To accommodate this, we have created separate areas for different activities, also known as activity-based work.
The office furnishings became more important. A variety of studies have demonstrated the positive effects of office furniture on issues such as productivity, creativity and employee health. Sufficient daylight and plenty of greenery, for example, have a positive impact on productivity and are therefore seen as important in today’s office environment.
Moreover, it is good for your health to alternate regular sedentary work with a short period of standing. In addition, a disorderly environment seems to stimulate creativity as well. We do not recommend that you integrate it into your entire office space, but it can be used to your benefit in a meeting room, for example. In today’s office, the atmosphere and happiness of employees are more and more important. After all, because we spend so much time at the office, we want to be just as comfortable at the office as we are at home.