Small Therapy Office Design Ideas

For therapists practicing in tighter spaces, these small therapy office design tips can help make your office space feel larger. 

Savvy mental health therapist office ideas for small spaces can significantly improve how you feel—and how your clients feel—when you’re working together.

5 Tips for Small Therapy Office Design 

If you’re tight on space, there are a number of small therapy office design ideas that can help you create a strategic and intentional therapist office design plan and ensure you consider the optimal modern office decor for small therapist offices that make the most of the available space.

Leave the Center of the Room Open

When you’re thinking about mental health therapist office ideas, considering the importance of adequate personal space for your clients—and for yourself!—should be top priority. 

Therefore, one of the most important aspects of small therapy office design is designing the space to feel expansive. This way your clients won’t feel that they are crammed into a corner of the room. 

You definitely don’t want clients to feel claustrophobic in your space.
Openness in the center of the room can help circulate calm, expansive energy throughout the space.

To achieve this open expansive feeling, place your large furniture—including your desk, filing cabinet, and couch—against the walls, if possible.

Another way to ensure an open space in the center of the room is to consider placing a low coffee table in the middle of the room with the chairs or couch around its perimeter. 

Be sure to avoid including too many pieces of furniture in your small office so that you are able to maximize the expansive, airy feeling of the space. 

Invest in Modern, Multi-Purpose Furniture Pieces

Speaking of furniture, modern office decor for small therapist offices must always be highly functional as well as visually appealing. 

Luckily, there are many modern furniture options that are designed for multiple purposes. 

For example, consider coffee tables and couches that have pop-up storage tucked inside, desks with built-in filing cabinets, footstools that open up to store away pillows and blankets, and wall art that doubles as shelving for plants. 

Choosing modern, multi-purpose furniture will optimize space and make the most of your office decorating budget.

These unique pieces help you organize thoughtfully.

Choose the Right Colors and Capitalize on Natural Light

The best color for small therapy offices is one that helps keep the room feeling light and airy, instead of dark and dreary. 

Pale blues and greens are known to evoke a sense of welcoming, balance and calmness, while earth tones are also great for promoting a sense of peace.
Keeping the tones light can help keep the overall room bright. 

When you’ve decided on the wall colors, you can create the color palette for the rest of the room with additional hues and accents.

Too much color can make the room feel smaller. Consequently, an important aspect of small therapy office design is a color palette from a single color family to create monochromatic harmony.
While you’re thinking about the best color for small therapy offices, remember to maximize any natural light in the room. 

Windows can make a room feel larger. To spread sunlight throughout your office, you can use a light white, light yellow, or cream color paint on the wall opposite the window. 

Reduce Clutter and Ensure All Items Have a Home

Another key to small therapy office design is organizing, reducing clutter, and creating a “home” for every item you need.

From lunch takeout boxes and snack packages, to notes and paperwork and personal items, take note of everything that can pile up in the office.

Then, take steps to reduce visible clutter, and assign dedicated places to store items out of sight. 

Organize your filing cabinet (or choose an EHR that makes it easy for your practice to go fully paperless), designate one desk drawer for personal items, and make a commitment to toss lunch in a trash can elsewhere instead of allowing it to pile up inside your office trash bin. 

These are micro-level tips that can lead to a macro-level shift in improving the energy of your office. 

Include Accents to Ensure Your Personality Shines Through

At the end of the day, you want your therapy office to reflect who you are – not a carbon copy of what you think it should look like. 

Small therapy office design does require a slightly minimalistic approach in order to avoid feeling crowded, but you still have room to incorporate elements that communicate your unique personality and authentic therapy brand.
Thoughtful artwork, thriving plants, and throw pillows are all therapy office decorating tips and mental health therapist office ideas that can help express your personality in a small office space. 

Designing a welcoming environment for small therapy offices can take some research and planning. However, once you have decided on your approach, the process should be fun, creative, and evocative of your personality and your authentic therapy brand. 

Experiencing the comfort, calm, and expansiveness created by your small therapy office design is its own reward, especially when you’re sharing it with clients.

How SimplePractice Makes It Easy to Run a Fully Paperless Practice 

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If you’ve been considering switching to an EHR system, SimplePractice empowers you to run a fully paperless practice—so you get more time for the things that matter most to you.

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