Business

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Decorated primarily with items on hand, the cubicle cost an hour's time and under $50 to decorate. (AP Photo/Jennifer Forker)

We focus so much energy turning a house into a home, we sometimes forget to aim our decorating genius in another notable direction: the office cubicle.

Home often expresses who we are, filled as it is with accumulated treasures and trinkets. But skip on over to the office cubicle, or, for that matter, an office with actual walls, and it can be a different story.

Some offices "are so dated. It's wallpaper from the '70s, falling-apart furniture and stacks of files, generally, an overall mess," says Sayeh Pezeshki, a designer who blogs about decor at The Office Stylist.

Considering how much time many people spend at work, "Your work space should be cheery and it should be fun, and it should be personal to you," says Sabrina Soto, designer host of HGTV's "The High/Low Project."

A soothing environment cuts down on work stress, designers believe.

"It really does affect the way that you work and the way that you feel," says Pezeshki.

And, she says, "You don't have to spend a lot of money" doing it.