Portland Reveal: A Light & Bright Home Office

Welcome to the Portland project office reveal. You may have gotten a peek of it when we showed you guys the entry, but here it is in all its petite glory. It’s a sweet little room right off the entry area and staircase with a big pretty window that lets in tons of natural light and cute barn doors. Sounds like my perfect office space/cocoon. We designed and styled it with a mix of vintage and new, and gave it a sort of executive bent in an eclectic way. It’s simple, but full of pieces that I LOVE and I could absolutely write to my heart’s content in that space, so let’s talk about how we pulled it together.

The desk was the key anchor piece here (it’s an office, after all). We chose a more open style that is “visually lighter” so that it didn’t stop your eye and helped make the room feel larger since the room is on the smaller side. Brady had toyed around with a few different desks in there when he was designing it from LA, but because the space is small, we didn’t want to do anything that felt too heavy or would block a lot of the room off. This desk (from Room & Board) was just the right fit. It’s clean, modern and totally transitional which made it easy to mix with the other pieces. You don’t see the details on the front in this photo but it has three really simple drawers that provide a bit of storage and functionality. The chair is from City Home (and very comfy). Office chairs can be some of the most depressing items to actually have to buy and use. They fall into the functional but “not so pretty” category a lot of the times, especially if you are looking for affordable options. This one was such a great find and is really affordable and high quality. I believe it was just over $200.

Let’s take a second to talk about my favorite piece in the room. That big storage piece from Aurora Mills. As of right now, my brother is buying it but if he can’t find a place for it, I want to ship it down to put it in the mountain house. At first, I didn’t want it because I didn’t see how it could possibly be functional, but then when we were in this room one night, Brady had the genius idea to have it serve as a big “junk” cabinet with each drawer representing a letter. Junk organized alphabetically…sign me up. It would be a catch-all for everything, so batteries would go in the “B” drawer, zip-ties would go in the “Z” drawer, tape measurer would go in the “T” drawer, I could go on and on with this and thinking about trying to find something solely based on the name of it sounds like an organizational lifestyle that I can get behind. It has 30 drawers so it would fit all 26 letters, with doubles for S, T, etc.

The lamp (from Rejuvenation) is a lovely little library-style light that brings in the brass from the pendant (also by Rejuvenation), while the black tones down the glam and also ties in the black hardware on the desk and the black on that globe you see in the corner.

Speaking of the globe, it is vintage and insane. We spotted it on our first trip to Aurora Mills, which is a massive property outside of Portland that is stocked floor to ceiling (in multiple buildings) with vintage and antique treasures. We wrote more about the store and snapped some shots inside for our post on Portland favorites (as well as a ton of other amazing local shots). They have just about anything that you could ever want from hardware to huge furniture pieces. We borrowed quite a bit from them for the house and their pieces truly are one of a kind. If it weren’t $1,200, I probably would snag it, it is so unique and is hand painted. Hand-painted antique metal globes—add that to my list of wants and not needs. But someone needs to give that beauty a good home.

The wood sculpture is from The Good Mod by artist Aleph Geddis and boy is it beautiful. It is simple, graphic and so beautiful in person so I had to take it home with me (there were actually four of them scattered throughout the house). The lamp from Lulu & Georgia helps modernize that big industrial piece and brings the brass over from the tabletop lamp as well as the overhead light. It also is perfect for that corner of the room as the shade diffuses all the light and gives the room a pretty glow. This close up picture of that storage unit really shows the patina on it and man is it good. You just can’t recreate that sort of look. I need that unit in my life.

The windows from Milgard have this lovely thin black profile (more on that later), which we paired with custom shades from Decorview. We went with the Vignette Modern Roman shade in the Brooklyn Tweed in Ivory Trellis because they offered a lot of light filtering and coverage and also have the traditional feel of a Roman shade with a much easier functionality. Like the ones that we used in the master bedroom, these guys just pull up and pull down and can be left at any level without any strings. They really are so simple and pretty and I love them in this space.

The art is this insane collection from MaryAnn Puls that we curated. You may have seen her work elsewhere in the reveals but she is an artist local to Portland that WE FELL IN LOVE WITH. I bought that collection, but please reach out to her to see what she has available because everything she creates is stunning and original. Art is the one thing that if I love it, I hoard it (especially a modern grid like this). We just stuck them into cheap IKEA frames to get them hung up on the wall, but once they arrive in LA, I’ll likely reframe them into some float mount style frames like these that are a bit higher quality.

Because the office is right off the entry, we had to come up with a solution for the doors so they didn’t open out and into the foyer. We decided to do a pair of barn doors that match the rest of the doors in the house (which are all from Metrie). I love that center medallion motif so much. It leans traditional while still feeling modern. We hung them on barn door hardware from Krownlab that allows them to pull closed when you need a little bit of privacy in the office area or to slide open when you don’t have all of your paperwork (who would do that, definitely not me if I had that alphabetical storage unit) all over the desk.

The doors are beautiful enough to leave open and closed and I love this shot above so much even with the doors totally closed.

There you have it, a happy, light-filled office that I would be very pleased to work in every morning. Let us know if you have any questions on the room, the accessories or anything else. Until then, I will be figuring out how to organize my life A to Z for maximum efficiency.

[drawattention ID=”173025″]

1. Black Frame | 2. College/Drawing by MaryAnn Puls | 3. Desktop Note Roller | 4. Ridge Cup sourced from Mantel | 5. Mellow Bowl Pendant | 6. Roman Shades by Decorview | 7. Windows by Milgard | 8.  Desk | 9. Office Chair | 10. Pepin Table Lamp | 11. Rug | 12. Barn Doors by Metrie | 13. White Vase | 14. Bowl | 15. Table (vintage) | 16. Lelani Table Lamp  | 17. Wood Sculpture by Aleph Geddis | 18. Assemblage by MaryAnn Puls | 19. Vintage Card Catalogue | 20. Door Plate | 21. Crown Moulding by Metrie | 22. Wood Flooring by Hallmark Floors | 23. Barn Door Hardware | 24. Aviation Globe | 25. Window & Door Casing by Metrie | 26. Baseboard by Metrie | 27. Pure White by Sherwin-Williams

Emily’s Outfit: Blouse (similar, original from The Great, no longer available) | Pants | Mules

More Portland Reveals:

• Living Room
• Entry & Staircase
• Master Bedroom

***Photography by Sara Tramp for EHD

***Design and styling by Emily Henderson and Brady Tolbert (and team). JP Macy of Sierra Custom Homes was the General Contractor, and Annie Usher was the architect.

For more Portland Project Room Reveals: Living Room | Staircase | Master Bedroom | Master Bathroom | Kitchen | Dining Room | Powder Bathroom | Guest Bathroom | Hall Bathroom | Laundry Room | Guest Bedrooms | Media Room | Family Room | Playroom