Office refurbishment London is looking up! Forget the walls for a second and check out what’s happening above your heads. Our latest obsession, hands down, is CEILINGS. You know, those awful white plasterboard tiles that you see in older offices that you can’t wait to tear down? Yeah, not those. Ceilings have come a long way from the sagging, water-stained ugly-fest of the 1980s and are now so uber-stylish that we’re dying to see where they’ll go next. Even if you do nothing else to your office, a revamped ceiling is DYNAMITE. Play with Depth and Go Black Black is not for the faint of heart, but this chic-contempo colour scheme above, designed for men’s charity Movember, is one of our favourite spaces ever. It shows how something as simple as wood-on-black can add big personality to your office refurbishment in London. We love that Movember were badass enough to go super-dark to create this dramatic ceiling and even more badass to let us put living plants smack-dab in the middle of the beams. They shout “Look at us we don’t belong here but that’s why we’re cool!” BRING IT ON, MOVEMBER! By the way, you’re gonna die when you see what the ceiling looked like before. Prepare to be underwhelmed: What a transformation! P.S. painting the walls white and ceiling darker is a great DIY idea if you’ve got a limited budget and a space that needs some oomph. Hide the Junk Whilst the appearance of a ceiling is important, you also need to think about what’s happening above the ceiling. Every office – including yours – has ugly pipes and cables to hide away, and you also need to think about sound absorption and insulation. For chic simplicity, the best option is a suspended ceiling. That’s an extra ceiling that sits below the actual ceiling so you can hide all the services away in the void. Suspended ceilings match any scheme from scandi minimalism to a smart country house vibe and the whole clean-and-white look is very much on trend. Check out these benefits:

• Looks sleek and professional – conceals ductwork, pipes and wires.
• Easy to clean and repair – suspended ceiling come in panels so they’re super easy to remove and repair. Access above the ceiling is as simple as removing a tile.
• Soundproofing – By installing a suspended ceiling with sound insulation, you can block the sounds from outside. This makes a room much cosier.
• Easy lighting – You can install lights, smoke detectors, sprinklers and so on easily between panels of a suspended ceiling. In this picture above, the lights that are the same size as the panels for an ultra-sleek and symmetrical look. Why have regular lighting when you could have THESE?
• Available in many styles and colours – suspended ceilings are available in wood, plastic, fibre, and other materials to match any vibe.

Let It All Hang Out, Baby Despite their functionality, suspended ceilings are not to everyone’s taste. If you’re going for a gritty urban look, the grid ceiling probably isn’t the best aesthetic. Industrial/ rustic designs, like the one in the pic, showcase their beams, cabling and ductwork for all to see – a bit like turning the building inside out and exposing its guts. And it looks AWESOME! Especially in older buildings with high ceilings and a bit more character. If there’s a downside, it’s that acoustics are trickier. Once you strip out the suspended ceiling, you’re left with a hard concrete floor slab or a roof for sound to bounce off. This can make the space very noisy. Luckily, we have some solutions for that. Removing a suspended ceiling in your office will increase your ceiling height, so there’s plenty of room to drop ceilings in certain places. Or, we can build floor-to-ceiling partitions in areas where you need more privacy. If you want to feel like you’re being enveloped in sound-proofed snugness, then ask your office refurbishment London company to drop a meeting cube into your exposed-ceiling design. The benefit of these beauties is you can easily reposition them as your business grows and changes. It’s Oh-So Quiet Our last suggestion is the wonderfully named ceiling raft or “baffle.” You can hang these pre-formed units anywhere from the underside of the floor slab, which is also your ceiling, to improve sound absorption in areas where you don’t want to go all-out exposed. They come in all shapes and colours from the simple circles you see free-hanging in the meeting room above, to grids, waves, hexagons or parallelogram shapes. They’re especially useful where you’ve got a large area to cover, but you don’t want a ceiling tile solution. They look great! So there you have it – our quick romp through the heavenly world of office ceilings. Next time you’re bouncing design ideas round, don’t forget your fifth wall. There are so many stylish options for ceilings, it would be a shame to just paint it white like a hospital. Things are looking up! Want some more tips to help you break out of a boring office space? You’ll find tons of ideas on our office fit out blog, or you can book a free consultation our friendly designer Amy, right here.