Interior design – and exterior design, for that matter – is all about trends and tastes, and if you’re trying to stay on top of fashion, it’s likely to require regular refreshes to the way your property looks. You might be willing to contend with this; or, alternatively, you may want to simply choose a design scheme that suits your personal tastes, and stick with it regardless of where the whimsy of fashion might wander in the years ahead.

Luckily, there are traditional and contemporary features that make use of modern materials, and are likely to remain looking sleek and stylish, even if they are no longer the prevailing fashion sense of the day.

Balconies

Balconies are a now popular addition to any office, as they blur the boundary between indoors and outside – something designers are increasingly fascinated with doing. These are particularly popular in new-build flats, as they allow you to get some fresh air and sunshine, without going to the extent of constructing a complete outdoor balcony, but also without having to sit in a communal garden.

Balustrades

If balconies add a useful touch to your offices itself, then balustrades can bring a similarly appealing visual element to your garden, as well as protecting against falls from any raised landscaping features. You can get balustrade kits that allow you to edge a raised terrace, decking or patio area yourself, with a professional look and feel to the finished railing.

Wooden balustrades work well alongside decking, if you’re a fan of using natural materials in your garden; but to really blur the boundary between the manmade interior of your office as well as home, and the more natural exterior of your garden, look to other modern materials. Stainless steel and glass are sturdy enough to withstand the elements outdoors, but add a striking visual effect to your garden, and work especially well alongside decking made of composite materials, or ‘hard’ materials like paving stones and gravel.

Block paving

Block paving remains popular, several years after it first came to prominence as a way of creating hard-standing areas for parking or to use as a patio.
Modern-day block paving, however, has the advantage of being permeable, so that rainwater is able to soak through it and into the ground, or into a controlled run-off route.

Intended to help tackle the risk of flooding in heavily built-up areas, permeable paving is an important consideration if you are in an area that receives a lot of rainfall, and in which many gardens have been landscaped to the point of having little grass or bare earth remaining.