Before and After: This Home Office Redo Is a Masterclass in Mixing Color and Pattern

Do creative, intentionally designed workspaces help to foster creative, intentional work? According to experts, the best, most productive workspaces have great lighting, are organized, allow for different working setups throughout the day, and reflect one’s personality.

Check out these 10 home offices so beautiful that work doesn’t feel like a chore, and be sure to add homeowner Maggie Overby’s newly revamped, color- and pattern-packed office space to your radar, too. Maggie (@maggieoverbystudios) redid the office, primarily used by her husband, a once-“steel gray” room “that lacked color” in this spring’s One Room Challenge.

“This go-round I wanted to take things in a more colorful direction,” she says. In addition, she wanted “a luxurious look with gold accents and lush textures.”

For starters, she painted the built-ins an emerald shade (Sherwin-Williams’ Hunt Club). “I wanted deep, rich color on the built-ins,” Maggie says. She also livened up the unit with new hardware and soft red peel-and-stick wallpaper behind.

One lesson to be learned from Maggie’s space is to not be afraid to use color complements — even red and green. Maggie uses a moody red (Sherwin-Williams’ Fired Brick) on the doors, and on her revamped IKEA MARKÖR cabinet, with pops of red decor throughout, but the space stays away from looking kitsch or Christmas-y thanks to the other colors and patterns that balance it out, like $340 wholesale rug, her leopard ottomans, and her tropical wall mural that are busy but play well together due to their shade and scale..

Maggie says she likes how the wallpaper makes the space feel a bit more vintage and eclectic, and it was one of the starting points for her design.

And her biggest advice “for someone considering a more cosmetic remodel” like hers is “to shop your home.” Although you wouldn’t think it, many items in Maggie’s space are upcycled IKEA.

The aforementioned MARKÖR cabinet was over 20 years old, and Maggie painted it red, added gold leafing and overlays, and affixed new gold legs to the bottom to make it look brand-new. Her trendy emerald sofa is actually the same gray IKEA FRIHETEN as before, just with a new velvet slipcover over it, and her floor-to-ceiling curtains are an $80 IKEA find with velvet trim sewn on to make them look more glam.

“I’m very proud of how my new wall-to-wall curtains turned out,” Maggie says. “They will be very functional for privacy when this room needs to double as a guest room.”

Maggie’s philosophy is that “many items can be restored, restyled, or repurposed to give a space a whole new look,” and we couldn’t agree more. Her colorful redo is perfect proof.

This project was completed for the Spring 2022 One Room Challenge, in partnership with Apartment Therapy. See even more of the One Room Challenge before and afters here.

Inspired? Submit your own project here.