6 Tips To Create Gathering Spaces In Your Office Kitchen

Pop of Color

Color is a great way to infuse personality into your office kitchen design. Color isn’t just a tool to make the space more pleasing, there’s a whole science behind how it influences our mood and energy. 

Not only are stark white walls boring, studies show that people make the most errors when working in all-white rooms. Depending on the vibe you want to create in your office kitchen, you can use certain colors to help:

• Blue: Enhances concentration and creates a calming environment
• Red: Increases energy and attention
• Green: Improves creativity, harmony, and peace while reducing anxiety and eyestrain
• Pink: Surprisingly, was found to be the most calming color on the color wheel
• Browns: Inspires comfort and security
• Yellow: While some find it uplifting, for others it’s a color that causes anxiety

In addition to painting the walls, you can add color to your office kitchen design in several other ways. Use accents like art, throw pillows, area rugs, and plants for pops of color and personality. Countertop appliances, dishes, and mugs can also add color to the space. 

Depending on your corporate colors, you can use them in your office kitchen design to reinforce your company identity.

Set the Mood

Music is a powerful tool that influences how we feel. It acts on neurotransmitters in our brain which control the mood chemicals dopamine and serotonin. Companies can use softly played music in the office kitchen area to reduce their employees' stress, and improve cognition, concentration, and happiness. 

Different musical genres produce different feelings and emotions. Classical music helps sharpen memory and cognition and is generally calming. Upbeat pop tunes help dial up the endorphins and energy level, while the Blues can reduce anxiety and nerves. While not inherently bad, look for music that has general appeal, avoiding niches like heavy metal or show tunes unless those styles are inherent in the industry your company works in and play into your specific company culture.

The music in your office breakroom can change throughout the day from tunes designed to inspire a productive morning, to playlists featuring beats for deep focus to more feel-good songs over the lunch hour. If you want to further engage employees, ask one person or one department to suggest songs for your playlist, like we do at Crafty. The practice has resulted in more feelings of inclusion and even turned some of the staff onto new and exciting artists, they might not know otherwise.

Entertainment Options

Yes, an office is about work, but it’s also about people and their well-being. While it might seem counterintuitive to put entertainment elements into your office kitchen, it can benefit the bottom line. 

Silicon Valley tech companies ushered in the concept of outfitting an office with games, and the trend permeated to other industries. You can create an area of the office kitchen dedicated to various games like foosball, shuffleboard, ping-pong, billiards, or even simple board games.

Scrabble, anyone? Not only does it boost morale, depending on what games you select, it can build camaraderie, help team building, and improve productivity. Some games known for building collaboration at work include Jenga, Pictionary, trivia, and jigsaw puzzles.

While we often lament kids who play video games 24/7, adding them to your office kitchen game library can have many positive effects. With most games taking three to 10 minutes to complete, they’re a quick reset for employees. Playing video games can reduce stress and increase brain function in terms of cognition, reasoning, and perception. Video games are also excellent team-building tools.

Research shows that team productivity and performance increased after the teams played video games. Some top team-building video games include Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Rocket League, and the perfect one for the office kitchen area, Overcooked! 2, which is basically Hell’s Kitchen brought to Nintendo. No matter what games you select, get creative and host tournaments, pit the marketing team against the finance team or offer a league. 

Incorporating TVs into your office kitchen design is smart because they can be used in a variety of ways to build company culture. Invite employees to watch major events and sports competitions together to create community. Televisions are also great places to share company messaging using a service like Loop TV. You can spread the word on important deadlines, upcoming company events, employee birthdays, and general company news. You can use TVs to promote employee well-being with content tailored to exercises to do at your desk or health tips. If you want to take advantage of standard network or streaming shows, pick something that appeals to a broad audience and isn’t divisive. In the office kitchen, cooking shows are a natural fit.

Create Your Office Kitchen Today

A well-designed office kitchen is an opportunity for you to infuse your company’s personality and culture into its physical space. It’s also a way to boost employee morale, productivity and retention. When designed well, your office kitchen serves as a hub for communal dining, a space for brainstorming and working, and a place for team building and parties. A great space also provides an area to impress and entertain clients. 

If you’re ready to start designing an office kitchen destined to become the heart of your office, the experts at Crafty are ready to help you create and execute your dream space.