I am definitely a PJ bottoms and t-shirt girl when I’m working (at home, obviously) and at play on the internet. That way I can just roll out of bed, stumble the 20 feet or so to the home office (with coffee!) and get started on my day without a silly thing called clothing getting in the way. In the summer it’s a vest top and shorts – and not forgetting my purple Crocs that I wear aaallll the time at home. And I don’t care what you say about them being ugly – they’re the comfiest things on earth

So, apart from making sure I’m wearing the comfiest attire I can for working, I also love to have a clean and calm working environment. As I mentioned last year, I was considering switching rooms in the house and moving the home office to one of the larger bedrooms. However, since I like the view here I decided to stay put. At the start of the week I got an idea in my head about painting the room and giving it a makeover…and once I get an idea then I tend to roll with it pretty quickly. The light purple was feeling old and tired…plus it never really was the exact shade I’d hoped for. Damn that B&Q man for telling me it would dry darker!

So, my first port of call for room colour inspiration was the Unclutterer Workspaces group on Flickr. I didn’t want white, but I wanted something light and airy for a small room. As I browsed through the ‘Workspaces’ section on the IKEA website for furniture, a picture of a home office flashed up which was THE perfect colour. The closest match I could find was Northern Lights by FIRED EARTH, created in association with Kevin McCloud, a British Designer who presents the Channel 4 show Grand Designs. It was almost £23 for a 2.5L tin, but so worth the price as I couldn’t find any cheaper alternatives that had the right mix of blue-green – and I am quite well known for my perfectionism. If it’s not right then it would bother me. I wasn’t settling for less.

The paint was bought on Tuesday and soon after came a mass evacuation of the furniture from the home office. Late-morning on Wednesday is when the decorating began. I was supposed to have an extra pair of hands or two helping me out, but they couldn’t make it so I did the whole room myself. I felt very accomplished. That was all finished by early evening. Then on Thursday there was a trip to IKEA for furniture, lighting and office accessories which cost around £85. Man, what was life like before this huge blue Swedish store?

In total the whole room makeover with paint/furniture/accessories cost around £110. Not bad. I am so delighted with the colour and if I spent a lot of time in here before the paint-job then I’m going to be spending every waking moment in here from now on. Everything is so much more organised and airy. I have my main desk with the iMac on near the window as usual, then an EXPEDIT bookcase as a seperator, then the PowerBook at the back of the room on it’s own laptop table called DAVE. There is a notable absence – the iMac G3. It doesn’t get used at all thesedays so is currently sitting on the bedroom floor until I get around to thinking about making it wireless. I’m not sure if that’s worth the effort, but I’m not thinking about it too much at the moment.

So, a couple of questions for you…

What do you prefer to wear when at the computer (@ home)?

Is your surroundings important to you (@ home or work) if you have in a particularly creative profession? Did you design/decorate your room layout yourself?