By 2025, 32.6 million Americans will work remotely – an impressive 22% of the US workforce. The work-from-home trend is growing rapidly, which means our home office spaces are also evolving.
Workers are no longer satisfied with a cramped laptop in the corner of the living room. Our home workspaces must adapt to ensure we can stay productive and healthy while working.
So, what will our home offices look like in years to come? We’ve asked the experts to share their predictions, and they did not disappoint.
Table of Contents
VR Meetings
Zoom meetings are a chore. Cameras freeze, mics never work, and people tune out. In the future, the monotonous Zoom meetings will be replaced with high-tech VR meetings.
This technology will create immersive environments that allow employees to share a meeting room from the comfort of their home office.
Each team member will appear as a hologram and be able to interact with others and the room as if they were there. And this technology isn’t just limited to meetings – project work, training, and presentations will all become easy with VR technology.
Nano Paints
Say goodbye to clunky paper planners and notebooks; nano paint makes it easy to turn any wall into a screen for displaying calendars, projects, and more.
“Imagine being able to project training videos and team meetings right onto your home office wall without the need to install a projector. You can make your office ultra-functional without compromising on the design.” – Joy Aumann from LUXURYSOCAL.
A company in China has even developed nano paint with the ability to change color at the touch of a button. This means you could have an instant green screen in your office for meetings or presentations and then switch back when you’re done.
AR Glasses
Augmented reality is taking the gaming industry by storm, but it also become the norm for home offices. With a pair of AR glasses, you’ll be able to see and work on touchable screens appearing in mid-air or see your colleagues as if they were in the same room.
Many remote workers report feeling lonely or isolated, so AR glasses could be a useful solution to combat that isolation and allow team members to feel like they’re supported while at home.
Smart Furniture
Sitting is the new smoking, according to scientists, which means our home office furniture is in need of a serious upgrade.
Standing desks are already popular, but they may not be the answer. Although standing instead of sitting can help with shoulder and back pain, it doesn’t actually help with fat loss or cardiovascular health. And if you’ve spent hours standing at your desk, you might just convince yourself you don’t need to do any real exercise during the rest of the day.
In the future, high-tech furniture might be another solution.
“Standing desks are great for some, and walking desks are even better. However, the future may shift more toward high-tech furniture, including chairs with biofeedback technology to give us insights into our posture and time spent sitting.” – Carl Broadbent from Carl Broadbent
With less commuting and ease of access to food and comfort at home, it’s essential that our home offices promote health and well-being. In the future, we’ll likely see many advances that focus on employee health and fitness within the home office.
Green Walls
We all know the benefit of plants for our homes, but home offices of the future might take that a step further with living green walls. Living moss walls are low-maintenance and help remove impurities from the air, pumping our fresh oxygen in their place.
Living walls are also great sound dampeners, which means a quieter, more peaceful office space in a busy home.
“Moss walls are great for the environment because they help reduce energy consumption. They cool spaces in the warm summer months through evapotranspiration and add a layer of insulation in the winter. I’d love to see more of these in home offices of the future.” – Rinkesh Kukreja from Conserve Energy Future
AI & 4-Day Work Weeks
AI is already having a significant impact on the way we work, and the effects are only going to increase. Although there is uncertainty over the future of AI, it could pave the way to a four-day workweek for both remote and in-office workers.
“We already rely on AI for all sorts of administrative tasks, and the more advanced it gets, the more it can take over different jobs. Some worry this could mean mass job cuts, but optimists think it could lead to lower workloads for employees – only time will tell.” – Ricky Torres from SMB Guide
Studies have already shown that four-day work weeks significantly lower stress and illness with higher retention rates. As of yet, no company has switched to a four-day workweek because technology has taken over labor, but this could be coming in the future.
Biofeedback Wristbands
Want to know how healthy you are working from home? Biometric wristbands could be the answer. These high-tech bands will monitor health and performance, giving real-time feedback and recommendations for improving well-being and productivity.
“Working from home is an opportunity to mix comfort with style, and your work wardrobe can become more relaxed. Biometric wristbands could be a great way to ensure you’re taking the best care of yourself and not overworking in a home environment.” – Chenise Hinds from Momooze
Of course, there’s a fine line between monitoring employee health for beneficial reasons and keeping them under surveillance using productivity markers. It will be interesting to see if this one becomes the norm in the future.
Only Time Will Tell
We’ve seen some drastic and unpredictable changes in office culture over the past few years, so it will be interesting to see how our home office spaces evolve with the accelerated leaps in technology.
From nano projector walls and augmented reality to eco-friendly moss and biofeedback monitors, there are plenty of innovations coming to remote workers over the next 25 years.