Interior Design, Office Design News, Trends & Tips

what is a work cafe and why do you need one

15 November 2019

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...

15 October 2019

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...

15 October 2019

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...

18 September 2019

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...

18 September 2019

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...

14 August 2019

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,...

14 August 2019

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...

15 July 2019

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...

10 July 2019

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...

14 June 2019

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...

14 June 2019

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...

10 May 2019

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 &...

10 May 2019

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 -...

16 April 2019

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 ,...

11 April 2019

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...

18 March 2019

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...

15 March 2019

Better productivity? A lunch table for 12

There is an undercurrent in many offices that makes employees feel guilty about taking a lunch break. Despite being entitled to time away from the desk, research from Mastercard and Ipsos MORI revealed only 17% of British workers take around one...

14 February 2019

Should the boss have a private office?

Isn’t the open plan interior office design a great way of working? There’s the banter, camaraderie and increased sense of collaboration. Plus, there’s the boss – sitting alongside the team and very much approachable. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? In...

12 February 2019

The hub is here: let’s transform your agency

We don’t need to tell you the High street is changing. Estate agents across the country are beginning to evaluate their branch network, trying to find the balance between brand awareness, public-facing presence, and bottom line figures. There is a...

16 January 2019

Don’t measure standing desk success in calories

A misleading news story misses the point of standing desks (although burning a few extra calories is always welcome). When journalists write a headline, they do so to grab attention and create controversy, and it was no different when the Daily...