What to put in my window?

June 13, 2017 10:44 AM

New office, I have a door. Door has what is approximately a 4" wide by 24" tall window in it. Right now it's covered in plain white paper. That's boring and uninteresting. What do I do with it?

Conditions: work and child friendly, as I work in a youth care office. I'm an IT guy, so nerdy is OK, but doesn't have to be. I want it to catch the eye, maybe bring a chuckle, but nothing that's going to distract the kids that are up and down the halls.

posted by deezil to Grab Bag (12 answers total)

Use either paint or tissue paper to make a fake stained window? Could be pretty with light shining through it.
posted by easily confused at 10:54 AM on June 13, 2017

Best answer: Clear the paper out of the window, and take a picture of the door from a typical place where someone might stand in the corridor outside, so that you can see into the office. Crop the picture down to just the window, then print it out and trace it by hand so you have a line drawing. Blow this drawing up (using the Rasterbator) and fill the window with it. That way, people approaching your office see a drawing of what's inside, and then open the door to see the same scene in real life.
posted by pipeski at 10:55 AM on June 13, 2017 [17 favorites]

A velociraptor head, peeking through, and a claw.
posted by phunniemee at 10:57 AM on June 13, 2017 [8 favorites]

XKCD's Tech Support Cheat Sheet.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:58 AM on June 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: this stuff is really easy to put up and awesome to look at - rainbows! there's lots of different patterns, too
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:12 PM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Go recursive. Take a picture of the door, and put it in the window (for one level of recursion). Or for further levels of recursion, use your favorite photo editor to put a smaller version of the picture in the window, and then in that smaller picture of the door, put a even smaller picture of the door in the window, etc.
posted by ShooBoo at 2:28 PM on June 13, 2017

I have such a window in my home, and I went to an art supply store and bought a sheet of very beautiful paper.

I like pipeski's idea, but with a velociraptor, godzilla, or superhero in the office.

When I had a retail store, I celebrated my own humor week and papered the display window with my favorite New Yorker cartoons.
posted by theora55 at 2:32 PM on June 13, 2017

How about vines cascading down from an over-the-door basket?
posted by andythebean at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2017

You can affix any paper or thin fabric to glass with a mixture of starch and water.
posted by ananci at 5:40 PM on June 13, 2017

Once I had white paper on the inside, and I would write a new trivia question every day with a dry erase marker. (The paper was so you could see the marker writing.)

You could also try something like fridgefronts.com, or get a cool patterned window cling.
posted by wwartorff at 6:07 PM on June 13, 2017

I like the trivia question one -- you could also hold votes, like, "Favorite animal: Cat / Dog / Armadillo" and leave a dry erase marker there to let people vote as they go past. You could also try free-form questions, like, "Favorite ice cream flavor" or whatever.

(I do like the quasi-stained-glass clings, they're super-pretty.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:11 PM on June 13, 2017

Response by poster: I'd love to do something interactive, but with not wanting to distract some already... spirited children, I will probably go for pipeski's drawing of the inside at some point in the future, and in the near-term, do something like 5_13's cling film (awesome stuff that looks to be!)
posted by deezil at 10:27 AM on June 14, 2017