Pimp My Cubicle

When Lee Burbage feels stressed, he turns to the mini Zen garden he's constructed in his 10-by-10-foot cubicle.

When decorating your cubicle, look around the rest of the office you work at and note what your colleagues have done.

(Getty Images)

"When I need to be cool, calm and collected," he says, "I can just talk to my little bonsai tree." The plant sits on a small red tablecloth he picked up at a Crate and Barrel store near his Alexandria, Va., office. It's surrounded by three unlit, light blue tea candles that match the blue rocks around the bonsai.

Burbage, 38, is head of human resources at the online investment advice company The Motley Fool. He's also one of 42 million Americans who spend most of their waking hours in cubicles. Instead of succumbing to depression induced by those chest-high gray, beige or blue partitions ubiquitous in Cubicleville, Burbage has transformed his space into a comfy, individualized refuge.

Click here to read more on how to pimp your cubicle at our partner site, Forbes.com.

"You spend more time in your cubicle than you do at home," notes Kelley Moore, the author of Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab! "If you design your space in a creative way that inspires you, it will inspire you to be more productive."

Along with Moore and Burbage, we canvassed a New York employment lawyer named Edward Hernstadt and several other thoughtful folks to come up with advice for those who want to decorate their partitioned workspaces to please themselves without displeasing their colleagues.

First rule of thumb: Look around the rest of the office you work at and note what your colleagues have done. At The Motley Fool, pretty much anything goes, Burbage says. Every one of the 225 employees at The Fool, as they call it, sits in a cube, including the chief executive. Not even flashing holiday lights and balloons are frowned upon.

But many offices, particularly those of law and accounting firms, are far more conservative. Either a written or unwritten policy dictates that workers keep their style toned down.