My Favorite Space: A Functional & Beautiful Home Office Nook by A House Full of Sunshine

Hey, sweet friends! I’m so thrilled to have my friend Karen from A house full of sunshine here today to bring us the next installment in the My Favorite Space series! Or in her case, maybe I should say My Favourite Space since Karen comes to us alllllllll the way from beautiful Australia! Wait until you see her gorgeous home office nook– here she is!

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Hello, lovelies. I’m Karen from A house full of sunshine, where I blog about making a beautiful and creative home with kids. I’ve popped in today to share one of my favourite-ever spaces with you…. my home office nook! Thanks Abby for inviting me!

What is the main function of the space?

When we built this house, high on my list of design needs was an office nook / family command center just off the kitchen.

Is it just me or do you all end up with paperwork and junk mail all over your kitchen counters… every single day? If it wasn’t the piles of school papers or mail or catalogues, it would be keys and wallets and basically anything else carried in from the car. All of it, dumped on the bench the minute any family member walked in the door.

My solution? To create a zone (right next to the kitchen) custom-made to control the clutter. The open plan design needed to do double duty as a home office where I could work on my laptop if need be while keeping an eye on the kids. We didn’t have the space in our floor plan to dedicate a whole room as an office, so this proved to be a smart idea that really worked for us.

The zone gets put to good use every day as a functional area to sort mail and paperwork, store office supplies, drop keys and purses, and charge devices.

Can you tell us about some of the fun DIY elements of the space?

This area was a completely blank canvas before I got my hands on it, so pretty much everything was a DIY labor of love. I started by stencilling the walls in a soft mint color to add a hint of femininity and a pop of pattern.

Next, I turned some cheap storage caddies into industrial-style wire mail baskets. (Click through for the easy how-to – this was a super-simple project with a big impact!)

I also installed floating shelves from Ikea and DIYed some inspirational prints to sit on the shelves. You can read more about the complete transformation and the various DIY elements in this post.

How would you describe your design style, and which elements in the room help bring that to life?

My style is generally modern classic. We’ve built a few houses now, and each time I like to experiment and try some different things. This house had a touch of industrial vintage throughout, so I played that up with the black wire details and kept the look soft and feminine by adding the trellis pattern. (You can see my complete home tour here.)

What is it about the space that makes it your favourite?

This was the first space I really created just for myself. So I love it because it feels like “mine”… from the “K” monogram artwork to the aqua desk accessories (my favorite colour!) and the pretty, feminine touches like the pink peonies.

The boxes and magazine holders satisfy my love of organization – there’s something about a row of crisp white boxes that makes my heart sing. PLUS…. there’s no more mess on my kitchen counters!!! WIN!

Thank you so much for having me here today, dear Abby!