Posted Under: Small Business

Want to maximize productivity and energy in your work space?  Have you heard of “Fung Shoo-ey” and thought is WAS “funky shoo-ey”?  Well here are some quick tips AND a brief history of Feng Shui that you can easily try now to “change up” the energy in your work space.

A quick Feng Shui history (from my book Designing the Life of Your Dreams from the Outside In):  “Feng shui is the 5,000-year-old Chinese science that focuses on living in harmony with your environment or how you interact with your surroundings through your furniture arrangement, color scheme, and accessories and collections choices. These choices can either block or improve your energy (chi). When energy flows freely in your home and in your office, life is fabulous, things get finished on time, and you feel happy and eager to learn new things. When energy is blocked, you feel overwhelmed, unhappy, and drained.”

I use the Western school (Black Hat Sect) of Feng Shui, which uses a tool called a Bagua Board to help with the layout of a space. Bagua is a Chinese word that translated means an “8-sided figure” or octagon shape. This figure is then divided into segments, like a pie, with a center piece, and that gives you nine areas. Think of a tic-tac-toe board. These nine areas are then assigned names, colors, shapes, and an element that corresponds to an assigned life area. The nine life areas are: Career/Life Path, Knowledge/Spirituality, Family, Wealth/Abundance, Success/Fame/Luck, Relationships, Creativity/Kids, Helpful People/Travel, and Health/Well-Being. The Bagua board can be used to space plan, accessorize, and plan your color scheme.

In using and applying the Bagua board to your office space, line up the bottom row (Knowledge/Spirituality, Career/Life Path, and Helpful People/Travel) with the entryway wall of the room. First, draw the floor plan of your room or “bird’s eye view,” including the doorway and windows, and then plot/draw the corresponding life areas around the perimeter. Still a little confused? Stand in the entryway of your room and look INTO the space. If the door/entry is in the LEFT corner looking in, you enter the room from the Knowledge/Spirituality area. If you enter the room from the CENTER of the entryway wall, you enter the room from the Career/Life Path area. Finally, if you enter the room from the RIGHT corner, you enter the room from the Helpful People/Travel area. Once you’re oriented, you can plot out the rest of the room with the Bagua. See what “areas” need to be worked on, or what areas you’d like to work on. You will analyze furniture placement, accessories, and/or piles of clutter. Once you get the concept of the Bagua and how to properly line up the grid, you’ll be able to work on any space and be able to identify the corresponding life area.

Now that you have the Bagua board plotted out on your floor plan, you can then “activate” these areas by using the element, color, shape, item, or direction that is associated with that particular life area (e.g., pink hearts can be used in the Relationship area or a coin dish can be placed in Wealth/Abundance).

Here’s a Quick Guide:

Wealth/Abundance: Purple/Metallic, Water Element, Wavy Lines, South East

Success/Fame Relationships: Red, Fire Element, Triangles, South

Family: Green, Wood Element, Rectangles, East

Health/Well-Being: Yellow/Earth Tones, Earth Element, Squares, Center

Creativity/Kids: White/Metallic, Metal Element, Circles, West

Knowledge/Spirituality: Blue, Earth Element, Squares, North East

Career/Life Path: Black, Water Element, Wavy Lines, North

Helpful People/Travel: Gray, Metal Element, Circles, North West

Here’s an example: One of my clients is a busy doctor and his office reflects that reality. Can you say piles of paperwork and medical books EVERYWHERE? Although walking into the room causes me to hyperventilate, he states that ” I know where everything is.” It should be noted that the office is in the RELATIONSHIP area of his home’s floor plan, therefore clutter and chaos in this area can have an impact on all legal relationships (romantic and business). Now, I didn’t want to make his office a shrine to his ROMANTIC relationship, but adding some pictures of he and his wife is appropriate. I repainted his office a red-orange color to accent the EARTH element of the RELATIOSHIP area. The accessories that decorated the office (college diplomas, family pictures, and other souvenirs from travels) stayed, although I moved them to their appropriate areas according to the Bagua. We moved the pictures of he and his wife to the RELATIONSHIP area, moved the photos of his children to the CREATIVITY/KIDS area, and pix of his Mom went to the FAMILY area.

You can also use the Bagua to help pick out your office color scheme. Do you want a better relationship with clients, co-workers, and vendors? Pick from the RELATIONSHIP (red/earth-tones) and HELPFUL PEOPLE areas (grays/whites/metallics). Do you work in a bank or other financial institution? Look to the WEALTH area (purples/greens/black/metallics). How about working for a non-profit? I’d choose from the SUCCESS (red), CREATIVITY (white/metallic), and HELPFUL PEOPLE (grays/white) areas. This can also be used to help you pick out a color scheme for branding and logo design. Remember that there are shade, tints, and tones of ALL colors and that “red” doesn’t necessarily mean Candy Apple Red. Also remember that color can be brought in through accessories like metal frames and furniture like a wood desk or metal file cabinet, and not just through paint.

Here are some other tips to help make your office more energized.

1. Make use of any natural light that enters the space. This is good for morale and helps in the production of melatonin in the body (a lack of this is a cause of the SADD disorder). Strategically-placed mirrors will help bring this light throughout the space.
2. Hang or place plants by computers, copiers, and printers. All emit EMF (electromagnetic fields) and the copier and printer toner also off-gasses which we breathe in. Plants such as spider plants help detoxify the air. You should ideally have 1 plant for every 100 square feet of space to help clean the air.
3. Only have accessories or pictures that are positive and supportive of your company mission statement. Anything else can be confusing and just add to mental clutter.
4. Make sure everyone has an ergonomically sound chair for to sit on, a chair that encourages proper posture.
5. Use eco-friendly, natural cleaners.
6. Make sure every space has task lighting to cut down on eyestrain. Computer monitors should have a screen to cut down on glare.

With all of these quick tips, you and your office mates will not only have a beautiful, productive space in which to work, but one that benefits the health of all who enter!

Author: DeAnna Radaj, owner of Bante Design LLC/Eden Place Productions, is able to enter a space and help to tweak (or remodel, re-design) the space to work better to suit its function AND the lifestyle of the occupants of the space.  Using ILD, life quality can be increased AND be supportive to any transitions occuring, lifestyle changes or health challenges.

She is a nationally recognized speaker on healthy home design, color therapy/theory, psychology of clutter for adults and children, and a variety of business topics for the individual, small business owner and entrepreneur. Visit the Bante Design Web site for a list of all workshops and appearances at www.bantedesign.com.

Designing spaces that are not only beautiful and comfortable, but also bring out the client’s personality, is her design philosophy.