From cave to sea of lights: I’ve renovated
After being fed up of my own four walls for some time, I finally got to work and renovated my home office, which also serves as a gaming room. It was worth the effort, and with RGB lighting, the room is now a dream.
I spend a lot of my waking hours in my home office, which is also my gaming room. It’d make sense to design it so it feels comfortable. Bright, simple and embellished with RGB lighting would be a good place to start. Up until now, it’s been the exact opposite.
So I came up with a laborious plan: everything in here needs to change. In my article on lighting fails in January, I already hinted at renovating, as the room set-up before didn’t let me get the best use out of LED lights. Where’s the fun without those?
I’ve been busy swinging the paint roller, replacing my desk and redesigning my workspace. It’s never looked this good. Read on for the before and after pictures and to find out what problems I had to contend with when redesigning.
Source: Debora Pape
The problem: I’m not a cave person
To get to the root of the problem, I have to go back two years: to when I moved into the house. The previous owner, a pensioner, had left me an orange-blue-yellow-green painted room of the «kids’ playroom» variety. Completely unacceptable for a gamer like me, as it was far too uncool. I wanted fewer colours and in the weeks before the move I was looking for a theme for the room. In other words, a main thread to follow that’d hold everything together.
I thought about it for weeks, looked for inspiration and even recreated the room in the graphics tool Blender to test different colours, but I kept discarding the ideas. When my mental health started to suffer because I wasn’t making progress with the room, I decided to opt for the «cave» theme. I planned for the roof slopes to be dark, I had «something with light-up crystals» in mind and perhaps a pretend (or real?) waterfall. Jungle-themed wallpaper could adorn one of the end walls.
Source: Debora Pape
The idea was nice, but reality quickly caught up with me after the move. Due to time and monetary constraints, I only painted the walls and soon realised afterwards that this wasn’t a good idea. The room feels cramped and the walls also swallow up the beautiful RGB lighting effects. In other words, I had my cave, but instead of sitting in a magical crystal grotto with light and water effects, I felt like Gollum underground. Even with the bright ceiling light, the sloping roof looked like a crag hanging over me.
Source: Debora Pape
Another problem was where I put my desk. When we moved in, there was a solid, 200 × 90 cm dark kitchen worktop permanently mounted between the door and the sloping roof. The elderly gentleman had used it as a computer corner: perfect for printing out an e-mail every three weeks and submitting his income tax return once a year. But not for sitting there day in, day out.
Source: Debora Pape
Nonetheless, I still used the worktop and gave away my own desk. This meant I was stuck in this unfortunate corner, and because the worktop was fixed on two sides, I couldn’t attach a monitor holder or other accessories. I made half-baked compromises – and although I kept things tidy, the area around my workspace always looked like a tip. Even RGB lighting was helpless here.
New theme: let’s float in the clouds
I was fed up with the whole refurb and decided to repaint the room and replace the worktop with a proper desk. During the day, I needed the room to be bright and welcoming, even without a ceiling light. And in the dark, the RGB lights had to be able to really work their magic.
A new theme for the colours was a must. I looked to the cloud city from Star Wars, one of the dungeons in World of Warcraft and the cover of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for inspiration. Based on their play of colours, it had to be a combination of warm beige and smoky blue. Airy, expansive, relaxed, this colour palette also complements plants and makes a great backdrop for a cyberpunk-style festival of light.
Source: Debora Pape
The only thing left to do was to buy the right shades of paint. I spent hours scrolling through supplier websites, but then when I went to the DIY shop, I changed my mind again about the colours I’d picked out. Not to mention the countless colour sample cards I brought home that differed only fractionally. In the end, I was sure that Inspiring Horizon Blue and Toffee would work perfectly.
Source: Debora Pape
Wondrous blue
After dismantling my computer and all my peripherals at about 11 p.m. on Friday evening, I was elated when I slapped the first touch of Horizon Blue on the wall and was completely flabbergasted. In the light of my room, the colour looked like baby blue and was more evocative of a nursery. Not good at all. Toffee was also disappointing, as it barely stood out against the wall.
The next morning, a nervous breakdown, another panic website scroll and a further hour in the paint aisle at the DIY shop ensued. I returned with a few paint samples and cards and turned my walls into a colourful patchwork quilt. After a lot of back and forth, I decided on «Grey blue» and «Pottery».
Source: Debora Pape
Source: Debora Pape
From workspace to gaming room
Once the worktop was sent to bulky waste, I needed a new desk. My husband happened to have a black table left over, which I painted in Light Ivory in advance.
When it came to wiring up my workstation, I had another nervous breakdown. It’s never a popular challenge to connect a laptop and computer reasonably logically and using as few cables as possible. Cable boxes, a net under the table top and cable conduits solve this to a certain extent.
I connected the computer and lights to smart adapter plugs to control the whole setup automatically – at least in part – using the Home Assistant software. Watch this space for another article.
The most important thing in a work and gaming space is – quite clearly – the lighting. And that’s where the keyboard, mouse mat and most importantly the Flow Plus lightbars behind the monitors come in. They immerse the entire corner in a sea of slowly changing colours, reminiscent of a vibrant sunset.
Source: Debora Pape
I recently bought Govee’s mesmerising Gaming Wall Lights, which I have to the right of my desk. You can easily get lost in the wandering and pulsating lights.
Source: Debora Pape
I’ve got an LED strip similar to this stuck to the back of the shelf, illuminating the wall behind it. The striking light-up salt stone below along with the other lights on and around the shelf have been with me for a long time, but the stone really comes into its own here. By rights, it should have played a leading role in the «cave», but even the stone couldn’t save the concept. That being said, it also goes well with a fantasy setting like Zelda. The Master Sword, Hylia shield and Breath of the Wild mural complete the corner.
Source: Debora Pape
There’s a «dragon egg» on the shelf that casts a moving pattern on the ceiling. It resembles water reflections and emphasises the «natural elements in the room». Unfortunately, we don’t have this gadget in our store, but you can find similar ones by searching for starry sky projectors.
As for the renovation, I’m more than happy with my new space and think the work was worth every nervous breakdown. I also have ideas for expanding on the project in the future to return to the original cloud inspiration. A paper lamp could spread beautiful diffuse light, for instance. And if you want something more elaborate, check out Pinterest for great ideas when it comes to LED-lit cloud ceilings made of cotton wool.
If you’d like to see where other members of the team work, take a look at the rest of our office corner articles in our related series.
Header image: Debora Pape
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Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
