A home office is easy to set up and hard to work in. The desk goes in the spare room, the laptop goes on the desk, and the walls stay blank, or worse, become the backdrop for every video call. These home office wall art ideas are about one thing: making the room help you focus, rather than distract you. Most of them cost less than a new chair.
1. Hang one thing in your eyeline, not ten
The wall in front of your desk is the one you’ll look at hundreds of times a day. A busy gallery there competes with your screen. A single print, at eye level when you’re sitting, gives your eyes somewhere to rest and your mind something to come back to. Choose a line rather than a picture: words work as a reminder without any effort on your part.
You Can Have It All. Just Not All at Once – Oprah Winfrey
A good one for the wall you face, especially if your home office doubles as the place you sort out family life. It reminds you that focusing on one thing is a choice, not a failure.
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2. Think about the video-call wall
The wall behind you is the one everyone else sees. Keep it calm: one or two framed prints, a plant, a shelf with a few books. Antique-style prints in warm parchment and brass look considered on camera without shouting, and they say something about you without a word being spoken.
Time Is All You Have. Spend It Wisely
Clear, large type that still reads on a webcam. A quiet signal to colleagues, and to yourself, that time here is treated as something valuable.
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3. Use a set, not a scatter
If you want more than one piece, choose prints designed to hang together. Matching frames, a shared colour palette and the same typeface turn three or six prints into one calm block, instead of a scatter that pulls the eye in different directions. Our Time Management bundle was put together for exactly this: six prints on time and priorities that work as a home office gallery wall.
The Time Management Collection – 6 prints
Six prints, one download, including lines from Tim Ferriss, James A. Michener and Brian Norgard. Print them all at A4 and hang them in two rows of three for an instant, tidy gallery wall.
See the Time Management Collection on Etsy
4. Match the mood of the room
Wall art for a home office doesn’t have to look like an office. Oak, linen, old books and a brass lamp all sit happily with antique-style prints, and they make a spare room feel like a study rather than a corner of work that followed you home. Avoid anything too bright or busy above a screen; your eyes already have enough to do.
Lost Time Is Never Found Again – Benjamin Franklin
A classic for a study-style office. Franklin’s line is short, correctly attributed, and has the right old-world feel for wood and leather.
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5. Put one reminder where you stop work
Working from home blurs the end of the day. A print by the door, or above the place you shut the laptop, can mark the line between work and the rest of your evening.
One Clock Counts the Hours – Time’s Richest Harvest
An original line from our book about the difference between time spent and time well used. A good last thing to read before you close the door on the working day.
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A few practical tips
- Hang art so its centre sits roughly at eye level when you’re seated, lower than you’d hang it in a living room.
- Matte paper and non-reflective glass avoid glare from windows and screens.
- A4 prints suit small home offices; a mount in a bigger frame adds presence without adding clutter.
If you’re choosing words for the wall, our list of productivity quotes for the office has four lines worth hanging and where each one comes from.
All eight prints from our new Home Office set, with sizes, framing and gift ideas, are on one page: See the whole set.
Behind every one of these prints is the same idea from our book, Time’s Richest Harvest: not more hacks, just better perspective. It puts into words what a lot of home workers already feel, that the days blur together and the hours run away. You can read more on the book page.