The 3 minute catch up: news, views, inspiration and talking points from the world of commercial fit outs and office interior refurbishments.

Glass half full: winning ways for better staff hydration

Water is a free commodity but many people still don’t drink enough to stay hydrated. Considering the traditional 8-hour working day – and the fact we spend more half of every week at work – there is an increasing emphasis on employers to keep their...

Improve office storage to banish clutter

We often associate clearing clutter with being at home – going through our wardrobes or filing personal paperwork – but the unnecessary mess and a tendency to hoard at work can be really detrimental. There’s a brilliant article published in...

Is sleeping on the job a valid idea?

The photograph of MP Jacob Rees-Mogg reclining with his eyes closed in the Houses of Parliament earlier this year became an internet sensation. While Rees-Mogg’s louche behaviour drew disdainful remarks, it also restarted the conversation about...

Your guide to specifying soft seating in commercial offices

Our leaning towards flexible workspaces means less rigid space and more informal, dual-purpose areas. Our office design experts say rather than set desks and set departments, the fluctuating nature of freelancers and the adoption of agile workings...

What is a work café and why do you need one?

It’s almost a bonding ritual when someone offers to make a cuppa but employers are struggling to find the balance between keeping their staff in caffeine and minimizing disruption to the working day. While nipping to Costa many seem like an...

Find your new flexible office groove

London is the top European location when it comes to flexible office space, reveals a new research document by agent CBRE. In fact, flexible office space now represents over 5% of the city’s total office stock, which was ahead of second-place...

Buyers & sellers want to visit estate agents in person

New survey results have endorsed the position of estate agents on the High Street at a time when many are questioning their physical presence. Agent Winkworth questioned more than 1,000 people who had either bought or sold a property and discovered...

Hooray for the High Street: UK shops strike back

Did you know High Street Queen Mary Portas is at it again? Her love of local shops in town is behind a new BBC2 series called Interior Design Masters. A recent episode saw her judge two independent shops on a Nottingham High Street that had been...

Chromophobia: learn to love colour

Did you know the fear of colour is actually a proper phobia? Chromophobia is an abnormal fear of colour but luckily it’s quite a rare phenomenon. What many of us do have, however, is an aversion to a shade we don’t find visually appealing or a lack...

The perfect desk job

When taking the brief for Coopers' office refurbishments in London , the client asked that we specify a cluster desk arrangement as the company wanted to move away from individual work stations. It’s a common request we receive at MPL Interiors,...

Office interior design ideas: wall art for the Instagram generation

If you create something aesthetically beautiful in today’s world – whatever the environment – it’s bound to end up on social media. Our desire to photograph eye-pleasing things has even led to the phrase ‘Instagram friendly’ – used to describe...

Hot ideas for a cooler office

We know that summer is unreliable in the UK but the hottest days always seem to coincide when people are at work. It’s easy for employees to get distracted from the task in hand if they’re feeling the heat – it makes us restless and our minds...

Screen sports for happier workers

Wimbledon, the Ashes, the Olympics and the football World Cup – just some of the wonderful sporting events that are great to watch on TV but, sadly, a large amount of the action takes place during the day when people are at work. Rather than create...

Moving out, moving in: a new look High Street

The news that Arcadia – the company behind chains such as Top Shop, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins – is staving off administration will not have gone unnoticed among other High Street retailers. Although the headlines about store closures paint...

How to turn an office into a well-rounded workplace

Going to the office used to mean nothing more than putting your Tupperware in the fridge and sitting at an identikit desk to grind out the 9 to 5. Now businesses are aware they need to create venues to engage with existing staff and attract new...

Time for a new shop front?

It’s a sad fact that shop fronts can be destroyed in the blink of an eye – sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose. Normally such incidents only make the local press but earlier in 2019, the Sloane Square branch of luxury jewelers Tiffany &...

How to facilitate the freelancer?

Freelancers are coming into their own in today’s gig economy with Wi-Fi, cloud computing and video calls making it possible to work flexibly in almost any industry. In fact, the number of self-employed workers has doubled in the last two decades -...

Walls that are works of art

You can’t escape the coverage in magazines and on the internet devoted to lifting your mood, improving your wellbeing and indulging in mindfulness. While many workers will wince at the thought of fitting this into their already-packed downtime ,...

Is sitting the new smoking?

We have often reported on the scourge of sitting too long and now a sedentary lifestyle has been billed as worse for our health than smoking. New research claims 70,000 deaths every year are caused by sitting too long – which is a higher death rate...

Office conversions force more relocations

Despite what you may read in the press, the UK property market is alive and well, to the extent that many office tenants are being evicted to make way for residential developments. It’s a trend first noted in back in 2016, when the Department for...

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