Tour My Updated Home Office With IKEA Kreativ

*This post was made possible by the generous support of IKEA Kreativ, and features gifted product for testing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Some rooms take longer than others to design, and that space for me has been my home office. When we first moved into this 1960s ranch a year and a half ago, I actually had my office in an entirely different room, but I’ve since relocated it to the smallest room in our home because I wanted something that felt a little more dedicated (not combined with our guest room). Setting up shop in a tiny room, though, has its challenges, and that’s a big reason why my home office has taken so long to figure out.

The good news is that my home office makeover is finally feeling much more finished and intentional today thanks to a good bit of help and inspiration from IKEA Kreativ. The team there asked if I wanted to experiment with IKEA Kreativ, a unique design-meets-shopping experience, to perfect my office, and I’m sharing my full review and the before/after tour here on the blog today. Keep scrolling for details!

First, a quick introduction to my office. I had already painted the walls a soft, warm terracotta coral color, and I loved the results. But the furniture has always felt a little bit like a work in progress. My old desk didn’t have much storage, and I found myself craving even more storage beyond what a desk could provide for other occasionally reached-for office supplies (think: notecards, external hard drives, workshop notebooks, etc.). Long story short, I wasn’t maximizing my space before, and I especially felt the need to add more closed storage space.

IKEA Kreativ is a free design and shopping experience that anyone can use and access right from the IKEA homepage. Just click on the “Design & Planning” tab at the top of the homepage, and then click on IKEA Kreativ home design. While there, you can use an empty or furnished showroom or a scan of your own room to design your upgraded space. You’ll find throughout this post that I used both options to design my space, but I mostly relied on an empty showroom to play around with new furniture.

If you’d like to go that route (using the showrooms), just choose the room that best matches your own, and then start searching out items of furniture that you think you’ll need. For example, I knew that I needed a new desk with more drawer/cabinet space, and that I also wanted a new bookcase with closed storage and room for open display. I was able to find exactly what I needed within IKEA Kreativ using the search function, and I added those to my digital space to see how they would look within our real life home. I moved things around, tried the furniture pieces on different walls, and also added stand-in items for furniture and décor that I planned to reuse from my old home office. You can see in the photos above that I was also able to swap between different perspectives of the space to get an even better feel for my soon-to-be new furniture.

Once I had the room exactly how I wanted it, IKEA Kreativ automatically added everything right to my IKEA shopping cart so I could check out. I just popped into my shopping cart, removed any stand-in items for pieces we already had, and then ordered my IKEA furniture to ship directly to our house. If you happen to live near an IKEA store, this digital shopping experience also makes pickup a cinch. Within a week or so, I had all of my new furniture delivered, and then I set about putting the pieces together. I managed to assemble everything on my own in just a couple of days, then came the fun part—styling and organizing.

Resources: BRIMNES Bookcase, MALM Desk, VATTENKAR Laptop/Monitor Stand, MÅNHULT Chair in “Black/Hakebo”

This whole process was such a breath of fresh air—honestly. I’m so used to having to make my own mood boards manually, and then driving all over town hoping to find similar pieces to what I have pictured in my mind. With IKEA Kreativ, I was able to put it all together right there on the store’s website, and then have my shopping cart populated for me! It was like having an assistant without the extra employee expense…I couldn’t recommend IKEA Kreativ more, and am so grateful to have a home office that actually works. Which room in your home could you stand to upgrade with a few new pieces of furniture? Let me know in the comments, and then hop over to IKEA Kreativ to start dreaming. Or, you can check out my Q&A article here for even more inspiration!