Product & Design Trends min read

There’s No Place Like Home: Merging Residential Charm with Commercial Durability

There's truly no place like home. Introducing elements of home into the workplace can create a more welcoming environment, leading to increased happiness and comfort among employees, which in turn enhances productivity and creativity.

June 14, 2024

What is Resimercial Design?

Resimercial design incorporates the cozy and homely aspects of residential furnishings, layouts, and amenities into the workplace. It combines the durability needed for commercial settings with a comfortable residential feel. This design style prioritizes residential-inspired features over the standard feel of traditional corporate designs and furnishings. Resimercial design aims to create a welcoming, comfortable workspace that meets the increasing demand from employees for homier environments.

What Drives Resimercial Design?

Millennial Expectations

At the beginning of the resimercial trend a few years ago, millennials, in particular, were a big part of what was driving the demand. They want spaces that inspire and allow them to express their individuality as well as collaborate with others. This trend was and still is especially important to millennials who grew up with mobile technology, which allowed them to seek out the best, most comfortable places to study and collaborate.

Prolonged Remote Work

Since 2020, the significance of the resimercial design style has heightened dramatically. With the prolonged period of remote work, employees have grown accustomed to the comforts of home. Adaptation is key as we transition back to in-person work environments four years later. Employees are no longer willing to work in a sterile and unwelcoming atmosphere; instead, they seek comfort and a welcoming environment that offers diversity and choice in how and where they work.

The Trend Within the Trend: “Office Peacocking”

Currently, a new trend is emerging within the resimercial trend, known as “office peacocking.” Because people have embraced the benefits of working from home, it has become a challenge to transition them back to traditional office settings. To address the challenge, companies are enhancing the workplace with attractive perks and aesthetically pleasing environments to counter the allure of remote work by transforming the office into a more appealing destination, fostering increased face-to-face collaboration and team unity.

Merging Residential and Workplace Elements

When merging residential and workplace elements, it’s essential to understand that the office still has to function primarily as a workplace. Residential aspects of design incorporated into the office must be flexible enough to be comfortable but should satisfy ergonomic needs as well as the integration of technology. Furnishings and surfaces that feel like home must be able to withstand the wear and tear of a demanding commercial environment.

How Crossville® can Support Your Resimercial Project

Let’s look at how Crossville can support your resimercial design project with tile collections that will lend a residential feel while offering low maintenance and durability for the long haul.

Wood Look Tile for Warmth

There is no denying the warmth and comfort that wood surfacing brings to an office setting. While real wood’s natural appeal can truly enhance the atmosphere of any workspace, the concern lies in the maintenance and upkeep needed to preserve the aesthetic appeal of wood surfaces. Who has the time or resources to dedicate to this level of maintenance?

Nest wood-look porcelain tile is a beautiful alternative to wood for floors and walls. The collection authentically captures the clean graining of both Olive and American Oak species in a durable porcelain body. Each wood look comes in seven natural colors and a range of sizes, including parquet-inspired mosaics.

Behind SpeakEasy’s rustic, weathered barn wood exterior lies a clever secret—the enduring allure of pure porcelain. Mimicking genuine American hardwood, durable SpeakEasy porcelain tile is perfect for cozying up your resimercial interiors.

Colorful Tile for Character

Remember when offices were mostly beige? Injecting color into an office design scheme is a great way to amp up the residential feel, and we have the tile collections to do just that. Our diverse tile collections offer an array of options to infuse personality and warmth into any office space. Whether a bold and lively palette or a more soothing spectrum, we have the perfect tiles to bring life and character to your workplace design.

Hide and Sleek wall tile offers an alluring shift in flat and three-dimensional tiles. Light plays along the pearlescent finish, casting shadows and illuminating vertical spaces throughout the day, causing the unique surface texture to recede and emerge in sophisticated elegance.

Argent porcelain tile deepens the already rich look of natural argent stone with superbly saturated shades inspired by colors beloved across America.

Each Cursive tile has a handmade appearance with a watercolor effect around the edges. Cursive ceramic wall tile is offered in nine trending colors and in unique and inspiring patterns such as triangle tile, circle tile, half circle, demilune tile, and more.

This nine-color calibrated ceramic wall tile collection isn’t just about hues and chromas. Color Perspectives oversized subway tiles make a bold statement, and the upscale bevel highlights the grandiose shape, adding dimension to any space

Back to Nature

We’re always trying to bring the outside into our homes, and the commercial office should be no different. Biophilic design elements, which replicate the sensations of the natural world, are good for well-being and contribute significantly to productivity.

Inspired by Belgian limestone, carbon-neutral Beljn porcelain tile is extremely versatile. It’s available in two finishes: unpolished, which features our unique FeatherSoft Finish for an extraordinarily touchable surface, and a bush-hammered style exterior finish designed for grand scale and high fashion in outdoor spaces. With a European sensibility featuring white veining, coal lines, and even visible fossils, Beljn’s old-school styling is modernized in our American factories with state-of-the-art equipment and craftsmanship.

Carbon-neutral Civilization is a porcelain tile line inspired by basalt. The smooth, fine-grained stone naturally varies in color from light to dark, and Civilization porcelain tile follows suit with six natural incarnations of basalt featuring unique crystalline visuals and subtle movement found in these unique rock formations.

Stone Fiction’s soft, swirling surface graphics and mild, infinitely matchable neutral color palette emulate what Mother Nature created in travertine’s distinct mineral deposits. Each tile convincingly reinterprets the stone’s naturally dramatic pits in subtle, easy-to-clean depth. The resulting coziness centers your spaces in the illusion of a time-honored material. Stone Fiction porcelain tile is available in both interior and exterior finishes for spaces that flow seamlessly from indoors to out.

Many companies have made significant investments in resimercial design for their office spaces, aiming to create an environment where employees can unwind and interact organically. Transforming the workplace into a homely setting is a significant stride towards reintegrating employees into the office, ultimately leading to improved employee retention, heightened productivity, and enhanced long-term creativity.

Great Design Starts With A Sample!

You can quickly and easily order a sample of any Crossville tile through Crossville’s Sample Express. To quickly order free tile samples, just set up an account here to get started. Once you have an account, ordering a tile sample is as simple as clicking a button — and samples are always free.