Your employees have wildly different expectations for office features and amenities today than they did even a few years ago. To keep them on-board, engaged, and performing at their best, employers and designers are going to have to meet those expectations. For many, that means it’s time to get familiar with resimercial design.

What is Resimercial Design?

A layout and furnishing style that brings the homey feel of residential furniture into the workplace. Resimercial design celebrates commercial quality, residential-inspired features over the sterile and standardized feel of corporate furnishings. The style has been growing in popularity in the past couple years, but at NeoCon 2017 resimercial workspaces went from being just another trend to a legitimate design movement.

What’s the Draw?

The main goal behind resimercial design and resimercial furnishing is to make the workspace a welcoming, comfortable place to spend time, something that employees (especially those in the massive millennial generation) are increasingly demanding in offices. From an employer standpoint, making the office comfortable and fun to be in has the added benefit of incentivizing employees to spend more time and be more engaged while at work.

Beyond those benefits, powerhouse companies including Microsoft. Google, Uber, and Yelp are investing in resimercial design to increase employee retention, productivity, and creativity — and it’s actually working!

From the foundational logic of resimercial design, that comfortable employees are happier, better employees, has sprung a growing body of proof including research that points to increases in productivity and creativity.

How to Get Started

Focus on Variability. Comfort and character are the driving forces in resimercial design but they’re also highly subjective. To provide everyone on your staff with spaces that accommodate their work style strive to develop a “palette of places” from open rooms that facilitate collaboration and communication to quiet, secluded spaces where employees can plug-in and dive deep into their projects.

Focus on Durability. Most residential furniture isn’t designed for the high levels of traffic and usage that office furniture sees. Fortunately, the resimercial trend is causing many suppliers to offer lines of residential-inspired furniture with commercial quality. Durable fabrics are especially worth your attention as upholstery tends to be the first thing to wear.

Focus on Ambiance. More often than not, it’s the feel of a space that makes people feel comfortable more than the layout or features. Design your new resimercial office with a special focus on ambient features like lighting, decorative features, noise level, and temperature. Even small changes on these details will help to make your office feel less stiff and structured.

Focus on Collaboration. As with open office layouts and coworking spaces, the new resimercial design movement places a heavy premium on the power of collaboration. Design with this goal in mind and focus on layout features that facilitate movement and interconnection.

---

Ready to bring resimercial benefits to your office? Shop inviting resimercial looks here.