The office kitchen is usually a common space where most employees can share their lunch away from their work area. As such, decorating this space involves creating a functional, yet pleasing, environment to eat food and enjoy the lunch break. Like all areas in the workplace, it should be designed to invigorate staff members and relieve stress while avoiding potentially offensive or distasteful themes. Consequently, the office kitchen should be decorated with bright, mood-enhancing colors like blue or green and equipped with easily cleaned appliances, if possible.
With everyone in the office using the kitchen on a daily basis, yet no one specific person assigned to clean it, an office kitchen can quickly turn into little more than a pig sty. While there are health hazards associated with a filthy eating area, the aesthetics of a room are quickly undermined when food blotches are found all over the place. Choosing appliances, furniture, and wall colors of darker tones is one way of ensuring this does not happen. In fact, dark blue and glossy black colors can do a lot to avoid this issue, plus they look nice.
On the other hand, using darker colors can contradict the need to destress employees. Fortunately, even black might be used as a mood enhancer. Shiny, well polished surfaces look very nice and pleasing to most, especially when they sharply contrast with bright colors, such as blue, green, and even dark orange. Because kitchens tend to get dirty very easily, blues, greens, and oranges can help hide mishaps while brightening the room. Meanwhile, it is also important to consider factors like making the lighting in the office kitchen as natural as possible.
Meanwhile, crowding can be a major issue in any work environment. Lunchtime is a period of relaxation for employees, so employees need a place to unwind. If too much stuff is in the way or too many pictures crowd the walls, lunchtime will turn into nothing more than a frustrating experience. This is especially true since the kitchen is a space often overcrowded by employees. By using a simple motif with some pleasant coloring, the kitchen can appear less crowded, so it becomes a relaxing area and helps employees over look how crowded they actually are.
Like all office environments, the break time accommodations need to be inviting and pleasing. Lunchtime should be a period of relaxation, thus all employees need to feel comfortable. A simple motif allows the kitchen area to satisfy these objectives without offending employees. Darker, yet appealing and gentle, colors will help the kitchen feel cleaner while allowing employees to feel more relaxed. Of course, employees should also be able to add a few personal touches to this work space as well, so long as those items do not overrun the office kitchen.