The freedom of working from home is great, but there are also extra challenges that come with it. When you're at home all day, it's easy to become distracted and procrastinate by cleaning the house or running errands. Keep the creative juices flowing and your mind focused by creating an environment conducive to generating ideas with our tips for working from home. You're going to be spending eight hours a day in your home office, so make the space inspiring!

Office colors

Paint your home office a color that you'll enjoy seeing each day. Maybe you'd like to walk in to see your favorite color, or perhaps you prefer the efficiency of a white room. Either way, giving your space a new paint job could beneficially impact your creative flow. Certain colors have also been shown to boost imagination, output and relaxation, so if you're not sure what color to paint your room, consider one of these:

• Red: This color increases blood flow and your heart rate. It's usually associated with passion, so add it to your office for inspiration.
• Orange: Orange is said to boost creativity and energy. If your job requires you to be pumped up for meetings, add this color to the room to keep energy levels high.
• Yellow: Bring a little sunlight inside by painting the walls yellow. This color creates a sense of optimism and creativity, so if you're a writer or in another innovative field, work this color into your environment.
• Blue: Sometimes work can cause a lot of stress, and if this is the case for your career, add hues of blue to the room. Blue should help you focus on tasks and is considered a calming color.
• Green: Similar to blue, green promotes a sense of tranquility and is easy on the eyes, so if you have to work long hours, choose this color to prevent your eyes from feeling sore.

Creative tools

Being creative requires the use of a variety of tools. Instead of the traditional blue or black pen, break out some crazy colors like purple or green. Re-stickable whiteboards are another useful tool for diversifying your work space. The stick on whiteboard can serve several purposes in any office setting. For instance, add a large square to a wall near your desk and decorate it with your favorite sayings, images and other items to create an inspiration board. Whenever you're feeling low on ideas or having a bad day, look at your board to remind yourself why you're doing your work.

You can also use re-stickable dry erase boards on the top of your desk. Placing one here allows you to quickly jot down any sudden thoughts, goals or to-do lists. Unlike when you write these things on a scrap of paper, you'll never have to worry about losing these ideas.

"Dim lighting can actually increase creativity."

Time to relax

Procrastinating can become a little easier when you're working from home, but so can overworking. If you don't have to leave your office at the end of the day to go home, the hours can start to blur together. When this happens, your ability to generate new ideas will diminish and you'll burn out on work. Avoid this fate by giving yourself periodic three-to-five minute breaks and taking a half-hour lunch away from your desk. The short breaks will give your mind a brief pause from thought, which will allow you to clear your head and come back to a problem with fresh eyes. Grabbing lunch away from your desk will give you a longer reprieve and will save you from feeling overwhelmed by your work, so make sure you schedule these respites into your day.

Lower lighting

According to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, darkness and dim lighting can actually improve creativity. You might think lower lights would cause fatigue or dreariness, but the dimness evokes a sense of freedom from constraints. The journal reported that four studies found dim lighting and actual darkness both improved creative performances.

If you don't think dimming the lights will benefit your creative process, then implement one of the other ideas mentioned. You'll have your own preferences, and testing out different methods will help you discover what strategies produce more creativity in your home office.