Interior Design | The Office + Beauty Room

A Tuesday post? A schedule? what schedule? I just felt like posting this one today because tomorrow I have another post going up. Today’s post is the first installment of our office/beauty room makeup over. This installment is all about the inspiration and some of the pieces we have purchased or are planning to purchase. I will do another post once the office/beauty room is complete showing you how it all turned out.

Let’s get started with some inspiration.

My husband and I love the video games called Deus Ex Human Revolution and Deus Ex Mankind Divided., not only for the story and the soundtrack which is amazing but for the design of the game itself. We both love black and gold, and honeycomb/geometric patterns which appear in the art design. The styling of the backgrounds and settings is our style. It’s a juxtaposition of antique and futuristic modern. The design plays with mixing heavy hardwoods with tech and ultra-modern pieces.

I have spoken before of my love for cyberpunk style and of course a love of antique. The interior design of this game fits our lifestyle seamlessly as we, my husband and I both enjoy tech, sci-fi, cyberpunk and the more classic design elements of ornate antiques. The style is functional and fairly easy to pull off in the real world… and it works with the general design of our home which is a more traditional Acadian style home common in Louisiana. The French influence from our home itself plays into the antique classic element of the design.

While there is far more clutter in the game design than I would care for in real life. I am completely in love with the warm yet industrial feel. I love having the technology as part of the look in opposition to the old.

If you are a homeowner, you know that it’s an ongoing project with your decor and design trying to find the right balance between function and style. We have lived here 4 years I believe and have been adapting our furniture and decor to fit our lifestyle. You come to find that some pieces that worked in an old space just don’t anymore and you gotta move on. We have swapped our oversized brown leather sofa for a chic chesterfield style and incorporated more modern lighting and tables. The living room is still a work in progress as is the bedroom. I will be doing some posts on the living room, kitchen/dining and bedrooms as things come together. We chose, however, to focus on the office which doubles as my beauty room and studio for when I have clients over. We spend the majority of our time in this room, more than in the living room or bedroom. I spend a good 10 hours in that room a day and my husband does too on his days off. We needed the room to be more functional. I was feeling claustrophobic and just too much junk and clutter. Our furniture was unmatched and didn’t work well together at all. Both our desks, and bookcase were far too large for the space.

I was using an L shaped desk with a hutch that functioned as my workspace and vanity. It took up a ton of room and was huge without offering a lot of usable space. I also work from a laptop which has the worse screen. (don’t order your laptops online) The color is really bad and I can’t edit on it at all, so I also had a 27-inch monitor hooked up to it for work. This set up took up a whole half of the L shape while the other side was a vanity area and workspace. It was just really closed on and there was a lot of dead space that I couldn’t access. Thankfully, I am getting a desktop in the coming weeks and a tablet to replace the laptop/monitor situation, so that alone will free up some space and create a cleaner desktop area. I have cleared out a lot of unnecessary decors and junk, more will be getting decluttered as I decorate.

We essentially need the room to function for both of us without being on top of one another or room to move around a bit. My husband needs a space to set up his desktop and to relax while he games. We want all the cords to be concealed and much as possible and things to just feel clean and more minimal while still fitting our Deus Ex Tech Noir aesthetic.

We also need storage where things can be put away when not being used. His desk was glass and offered no storage or concealment of anything so it was always looked cluttered no matter how empty it was. My husband doesn’t like a whole lot of knick-knacks in his workspace. I, on the hand like a few. I like to display some favorite makeup items from time to time and have things easily accessible. I have a lot of office stuff but even more makeup and this is a journey in finding a way to keep them together but separate. As a beauty blogger, I like to have my office and makeup on hand together with good lighting for photography but still look stylish and make me feel comfortable.

So now you have an idea of our style and what we need from the office/beauty room. Let’s get into some of the pieces we picked. We are working a bit of a budget so as much as I would like to buy everything from West Elm, furnishing a whole office from them would be way too much and the pieces are just a bit too large for the space and what we want.

In my search for something we liked, I came across the Guthrie Collection from Project 62 at Target and fell in love. The size, colors, and price were perfect!

We purchased 2 of the desks, the media center or credenza and a bookshelf from the collection.

The desks offer up 2 drawers for storage and a good bit of workspace. The credenza which is meant to be a media center will function as my makeup storage and additional workspace. I already have an antique secretary desk that gives us a lot of storge and a small display area for books and decor as well. I will be refinishing it to a matte black like the other pieces and replace the hardware with a more modern brass. Of course, the bookcase will be a bookcase. I have a lot of books but I am going to try to pair them down and lose of some the clutter there as well.

We actually moved the old bookcase we had to the closet for shelving and that is working out great!

We haven’t picked new chairs yet. that one is one style I was flirting with. I know my husband wants armrests and the need to be comfortable. The ones we have now are fine, just a bit big. I am not in a rush on the chairs.

As for lighting, I am still narrowing down which lamps I want.

I need them to be adjustable and be pretty bright for photography but I also require them to look good. I currently work with two desk lights and a ring light which is fine. I just want prettier desk lamps and a floor lamp.

In the organization department, I have some ideas. I already have quite a few baskets and containers from the Dollar Tree for inside drawers and cabinets. I will have to wait and see how they work out with the new stuff. I have a cute rolling cart as well that I use for makeup. It may or may not be staying in the office. Anyway, while I was looking around on Target’s website I found a few makeup organizers I liked as well as containers.

On to the fun part, decor. I have picked quite a few pieces that we will be narrowing down from. I know some of them we really want and some are more if they work in the space once everything is set up.

We may end up getting some of these pieces for the living room or bedroom because we like them all so much but right now the priority is the office.

The furniture arrived yesterday, two desks have been put together and the credenza and bookcase are being assembled this evening. I don’t want to start setting up computers or desk stuff until I have glass panes cut to fit the desktops. I know how clumsy I am, my old desk showed some real wear and tear.

If you could see the state of my living room right now… I am going to go insane. All the office stuff is out here and stuff from my roommate’s room to go into storage. She had to clear out a bunch of stuff as she took my old desk. It looks like a nightmare in here. I am working from the couch this week because everything is packed up. The mess is giving me some real anxiety though. I don’t like unfinished projects and mess, it really stresses me out and frankly makes me angry. Not really relevant to the post but just relating some frustrations and one of the forces behind fixing up our office. Feeling a little frazzled. You ever just feel like you can’t get ahead with domestic stuff, like cleaning and keeping things in order. I’m legit having some real anxiety over this stuff. Before you ask if I am OCD, why yes, a touch and I am very anxiety prone.

Quick story time about how I am. When we first moved into this house. I had everything unpacked, put away and decorated within a week. I liked getting shit done and feeling like things are together and settled. I keep having to remind myself to be patient, things will get done, home projects take time and there is only so much I can do myself.

Okay, enough for today. I have to go clean up the kitchen because it’s a shit show right now and get dinner started, I swear I have become my mother, freaking domestic goddess over here. That was sarcasm. I wish I was so efficient. Honestly, I wasted most of today binge-watching Orange is the New Black season 5. We just got Netflix back. LOL.