Can you create a fully customized, productive home while living overseas? A family relocating from South Africa to South Carolina did just that with Decorilla, designing two offices and a laundry room as part of their larger project—all while construction was still underway. Read on for the latest results!
The Challenge: Productive Home With Offices & Library
Working from South Africa before their summer relocation, the clients contacted Decorilla for expert interior design guidance on a modern build in Aiken, where architectural revisions were still underway. This part of their comprehensive productive home project included a laundry room and two office spaces, one of which would also serve as a masculine entry library. All three rooms required flooring, cabinetry, furnishing, and decor decisions, so the designer had to:
- Specify flooring materials and finishes for both office spaces that align with the rest of the house
- Develop a masculine character for the entrance office/library through wall treatments, millwork, or material selection
- Provide functional storage and work surface recommendations for both offices, including accommodation for art display
- Coordinate window frame finishes (charcoal or black metal) and hardware selections across office and laundry spaces
- Guide cabinetry, countertop, and fixture choices for the laundry room that maintain material continuity with the rest of the home
Pro Tip: Trying to find the right aesthetic direction for designing your own productive home office? Try our Free Interior Design Style Quiz to discover your ideal style today!
Design Inspiration: Home Office Library Design
The client gravitated toward productive home office environments that could accommodate concentrated work alongside the art collection they planned to transport from South Africa. Their entrance library required a masculine register: not very trendy, engaging but subtle. The key was to connect this client-oriented space, situated at the main entry, with the front of the house. The secondary office needed a quieter character, one that could function within a bedroom wing and support tasks requiring sustained focus. These inspirational images revolved around functional decor elements, such as fluted paneling or textured wall treatments.
Functional improvements centered on millwork that could organize vertical storage while keeping horizontal work surfaces uncluttered. Many of their home library design ideas leaned toward neutral floor-to-ceiling cabinetry. Meanwhile, the laundry room design required functional creativity and coordination to connect back to the rest of the house. The overall style merged modern farmhouse elements with contemporary twists, filled with textural interest while maintaining clean lines and efficient layouts.
Initial Concepts: Finding the Right Designer
Before the project started, the Decorilla team assigned two designers with experience in productive home office layouts and new construction coordination. Kamila A. and Wanda P. developed separate concepts that approached the office and laundry spaces through different material strategies.
As the clients decided to proceed with Wanda as their designer during the previous stages of the project, she was now the only one to deliver the propositions for the offices. She designed her bedroom office moodboard around neutral textures and modular storage. Grasscloth wallcovering was also there to connect two adjoining spaces cohesively.
The entrance library/office moodboard introduced charcoal cabinetry that gave it the masculine register the clients requested. This proposal included open shelving for book spines and closed compartments below for files, with hardware and window frames in matching black metal.
Modern New Construction Interior Design Series
This new construction project unfolded in stages, each addressing a different layer of the home. The designer worked remotely to establish material selections while the build was still underway. Structural finishes came first, followed by room-by-room development. For the complete transformation, explore the whole series:
- Before & After: Modern New Construction Interior Design – The Heart of the Home
- Before & After: Modern New Construction – Luxurious Master Suite (Coming Soon!)
- Before & After: Modern New Construction – Cool Kids Rooms (Coming Soon!)
- Before & After: Modern New Construction – Welcoming Entrance Areas (Coming Soon!)
Results Revealed: Productive Home Interiors
The new, productive home design showcases distinct approaches for work zones and utility areas. Material continuity is notable, along with the way the solution addresses separate functional demands. Creative partitions maintain visual connections, at the same time managing acoustic needs specific to work zones where video calls and phone meetings happen regularly. Storage volume drives decisions in all three spaces—here’s how the designer developed them.
Home Library Design + Office
The entrance office sits behind a steel-framed glass partition. These panels separate the work zone from adjacent circulation while keeping sightlines open at the same time. Black muntins in a grid pattern match the exterior window frames specified across the house, creating material continuity.
Floor-to-ceiling storage dominates this home library design; it runs the full length of the back wall and acts also as a focal point. Open shelving occupies its upper two-thirds, holding reference books and objects from the client’s art collection. Closed cabinetry below absorbs files and equipment that would otherwise clutter horizontal surfaces. LED strip lighting runs behind each shelf edge to illuminate book spines and displayed pieces after daylight fades.
Wide, sleek black desk spans the base of the built-in unit. The pair of cream upholstered task chairs face this desk, allowing the space to function for both solo work and client meetings. The textured sisal rug defines the seating cluster. A low, gray sofa occupies the opposite wall, accompanied by patterned pillows and a side table. This seating arrangement emphasizes two functional zones—an office and a library with a reading corner— within a compact footprint.
Four framed art pieces from the client’s collection hang on the wall above the sofa. Black window frames align with the desk and partition metalwork, tying exterior and interior hardware into a consistent palette.
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Striking the Perfect Balance
The steel-framed glass partition system in the entrance office solved competing needs that often pull utility spaces in opposite directions. The clients wanted a defined room at the home’s threshold that would register as substantial rather than incidental. Yet, the floor plan required that natural light from the adjacent living area reach deeper into circulation zones. Full-height glass in a black muntin grid now establishes physical separation for sound control during calls without disturbing sightlines across connected spaces.
Productive Home Office Behind the Bedroom
This productive home features two offices. The other occupies space within the bedroom wing where concentrated work happens away from household traffic. Horizontal grasscloth wallcovering wraps all four walls in a fine linear texture that absorbs sound and provides visual interest across larger unbroken surfaces. The natural fiber adds warmth to a room that required functional density, with two work stations and substantial storage.
Built-in millwork fills the primary wall in a cream-painted finish that contrasts with the grasscloth backdrop. Open shelving runs across the upper section with LED strips recessed behind each shelf edge. The millwork reads as an architectural element more than as assembled furniture.
A dual desk configuration creates two distinct work zones that effortlessly accommodate simultaneous use. Sisal rug defines the floor area below them, grounding this setup and visually separating it from circulation paths. Linear pendant fixtures hang above each workstation, supplementing daylight with task lighting directed at keyboard and paper surfaces. Gray roller shades mount inside the window frames to control glare when the sun angle requires adjustment.
A red beaded texture panel introduces concentrated color to a single surface. The designer placed it tactically so that it could catch the morning light and serve as a focal point visible from the door.
On the perpendicular office wall, two white panels successfully conceal the TV in a way that makes the set read as a geometric 3D artwork.
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Laundry Room Design
The coherence of this large productive home is outstanding. The design succeeds in maintaining material continuity even in a purely utilitarian space where function dictates most decisions.
The laundry room design carries the white oak flooring and white cabinetry palette from the main living areas. Blue-gray vertical tile runs floor-to-ceiling on the window wall and wraps the backsplash behind the folding counter as both a functional and aesthetic accent. Its narrow rectangular format creates a rhythm distinct from the mainstream horizontal plank patterns. Black countertops in honed stone match the dark window frames, tying this room into the broader hardware and finish strategy established during construction.
Pale herringbone flooring resists spills and tracks from the outdoor entry adjacent to this space. The washer and dryer sit on raised platforms with pull-out drawers beneath, reclaiming the dead space that typically remains unused below front-loading machines. The drying racks are also designed with maximum practicality in mind and mounted on the ceiling above the folding counter. They hang on pulley systems that lower for loading and raise out of circulation paths when not needed.
Meanwhile, built-in solutions address multiple practical constraints, from storage for multiple bedrooms to work surfaces for active tasks. White-painted millwork reads as clean infrastructure while meeting the client’s requirement for volume capacity. Upper cabinets span the length of most walls and extend to the ceiling. Oval cutouts convey visual interest and also keep some content visible yet organized.
Design Details: Sourcing the Perfect Pieces
Decorilla’s 3D visualizations helped clients evaluate material and furniture selections while still based in South Africa during active construction. These visual tools compressed decision timelines that would otherwise have required multiple rounds of sample shipping and phone consultations across time zones. At the same time, trade pricing through Decorilla’s vendor network kept furniture costs below retail, redirecting budget toward custom millwork and other important choices.
Wanda revised specifications throughout the project as construction realities emerged and client priorities shifted. The remote collaboration spanned several months, with the final furniture installation happening after the family relocated in the summer. When it all wrapped up, the client wrote: “Hi Wanda, I can’t believe we are at the end! It’s been such an amazing project.”
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