Story
A frustration that became a business plan.
In 2015 there were only white desks and black chairs, and they ruined the interiors we had worked so hard on. So we made our own, in one grey, and called it the Boring Collection. Ten years of it, below.
The longer version
In 2015 there were only white desks and black chairs, and they ruined the interiors we had worked so hard on. So we thought: can we not make cheap office furniture ourselves, in one grey, so it does not stand out? And call it the Boring Collection. It launched in Milan in April 2016, won an award for being boring, made a film about a paper ball, built a tower, hung a mobile, and became an independent brand in 2024. In April 2026 it turned ten, which was marked, like most things here, by continuing. The ambition has not changed: every office item that is truly necessary, in one grey, and none of the items that are not. There will be no Boring sofa. Sofas are allowed to want attention.
Utrecht
During a large office project in Utrecht, the architects watch their careful design drown in the only furniture the budget allowed: white desks, black chairs. They had worked hard on those interiors. So they thought: if cheap office furniture cannot be avoided, can we make it ourselves, in one grey, so it does not stand out? The name Boring started as a joke. Friends remembered it better than the name of the office itself.
Salone del Mobile, Milan
Remi Versteeg and Stijn de Weerd develop the idea with Pieter Kraaijenbrink and Joep Dyckhoff, and Lensvelt takes it into production. The launch in Milan is built on two universal icons of boredom, the desert and the paper ball. Visitors are invited to throw. The installation wins the Milano Design Award for Best Concept. The New York Times, Wallpaper, Dezeen and Domus report. Corriere della Sera puts it in print.
16:59, a film by Lernert & Sander
Lernert & Sander are asked to make a serious film about a boring collection. They nearly hand the assignment back, because their films live on monochrome backdrops and now the subject itself is monochrome. Then they embrace it. A man throws one precisely crumpled ball of paper per second into sixty bins around him, until the clock turns five. Office humour becomes the language of the brand.
Orgatec, Cologne
For the office fair in Cologne, Lernert & Sander stack the calm to six metres: a tower of Boring furniture in homage to Ettore Sottsass' Carlton cabinet. Stylepark calls it a furniture totem. We call it practical storage. It is later shown at Design Museum Den Bosch.
Photo: Alexander van Berge and Roos Aldershoff
The architects arrive
Dutch architects are the first to adopt the collection. Odette Ex uses it for BPD in the Burgerweeshuis, Aart van Asseldonk in De Ploeg, Rietveld's factory. Space Encounters furnish Joolz, Sony Music and Lightspeed with it. The furniture disappears, the buildings take the stage. That was the idea.
The Museum, Milan
Back at Salone, this time as The Museum: Boring furniture presented on carpets, between columns and in front of brick walls, like artefacts that nobody came to see. A deliberately understated installation in the loudest week of the design year.
Collaborations
Forbo makes a Marmoleum in Boring grey and films Remi at the factory in Assendelft: The Space Maker. Dataflex makes the monitor arm, the cable guide and the cable cover. Tarkett the carpet tile. One by one, the office turns grey.
Beyond Space and the Boring Mobile
Remi Versteeg and Stijn de Weerd found Beyond Space, and the collection moves with them. At BIG ART on the Hembrugterrein they hang 42 perfectly balanced Boring clocks in a six metre mobile that turns counter clockwise, to a lullaby of office sounds by Coen Berrier. Under it, visitors sink into bean bags and lose track of time. The same year, Centraal Museum Utrecht uses the collection, not exhibits it, for the move of a 17th century dolls' house. It supported without distracting. Finally.
Certosa, Milan
Four thousand square metres of white scaffolding and fabric at the Certosa Initiative, with Boris Acket. The collection in a cloud.
Independent
Boring Collection becomes an independent brand. At Lensvelt it was distributed mostly through their own projects; now it is available through dealers, with products in stock, shorter delivery and a refurbishment programme. The occasion is marked with Bar Boring, an office party, and the ambition is stated with a straight face: world domination.
In the press: Architectenweb · PI Online · Dutch Design Daily
New products, new pictures
The Light, the Coat Stand, the Stationery Set, the Notebook and Pen, the Power Outlet. Studio Mova photographs the products, Reinier van der Aart photographs the special days: a bin full of flowers, a clock pouring champagne, a dog in the task chair. OBJECT Rotterdam shows the collection among the designers. And a film: An introduction to the wonderful world of the Boring Collection, four minutes and twenty seconds, the only film in which a tape dispenser gets a close up.
The Complaints Desk, OBJECT Rotterdam
At OBJECT Rotterdam the collection opens a Complaints Desk, where visitors file a complaint about their current office on a form, with a Boring Pen, and leave with a signed receipt. The queue is long and the complaints are familiar. Boring is the answer to most of them. In April the collection turns ten.
TjeerdMarie at Amsterdam Fashion Week
The TjeerdMarie show walks through an office of Boring furniture: desks and chairs in rows, the audience at the workplaces, the models in the corridor between them. The clothes have all the colour. The desks have none. That was the arrangement.
The original text, 2016
Anything but outstanding
Written for the launch at Salone del Mobile in April 2016, when the tagline was still Anything but outstanding. Since then it has become leave room for colour, which says the same thing from the other side. We have not changed a word of the text, including the ones we would change.
This story is not about a chair. It is not about a four legged table, a tall closet and a small closet either.
Read the whole text
The appearance of our offices has dramatically changed over the years, as well as the way we make use of our workplace. We used to spend our eight hour work days surrounded by huge computer screens and sturdy wall panels, but today's office spaces are far more pleasant. We no longer have to settle for the bitter, stale coffee from the machine, but we order our lattes in the fancy coffee corner. We have become used to opening up our laptops whenever and wherever we choose to, instead of having to sit next to the same colleagues and having to tap our pencils against the edge of the same desk until the clock turns five.
But some things have stayed exactly the same. Even though the atmosphere of our workplace has undergone a great deal of change; the desks and chairs that fill our offices remain unaltered. And the reason for that is quite simple:
Designers are forced to follow the European standards that dictate the form and functionality of office furniture. These regulations have made the design process quite inflexible. And it has made the offer on hand limited. Of course it is possible to find more appealing furniture but most companies will have to work around a tight budget and will end up with cheap, wear resistant furnishings that are rendered in unforgiving colours.
Architects keep on stumbling upon this same issue. Each time they were ready to put the final touches on one of their newly designed office spaces, they were confronted with the same office chairs, tables and cubicle walls: stubbornly old fashioned furniture that was determined to spoil the party. Add the usual picture frames, plants, folders and coffee mugs, and the original concept behind the interior is completely overshadowed.
The traditional office no longer exists and it is time to let the furniture catch up. Our workplace deserves affordable solutions that comply with regulations and also manage to let the overall interior design shine.
An attempt to create more aesthetically pleasing furniture is not an option. It will either become unaffordable or will lead to impossible compromises. That is what made Boring Collection decide to shift the focus away from the furniture and onto other things, resulting in a process where they redefined office furniture by questioning what is truly essential about these designs.
The basic elements were on hand; the task was to choose between the already existing and certified components. By taking the European standards in consideration while trying to minimize their impact, Boring Collection assembled a line of archetypal furniture. Shaded in a muted grey tone that gives the designs the unique ability to completely blend in with its surroundings.
That is Boring Collection. Sober grey, no fuzz, no pretensions. The tagline: Anything but outstanding. It is time to put everything else front and centre: the interior design, the view, that other great chair, the pictures on the wall, the people.
What really stands out about Boring Collection is how the designs manage to be anything but outstanding. Their true virtue and potential becomes apparent when the different products are arranged in a group. Together they make up a sober and quiet family of furniture that, despite being multiplied, still manages to let the interior around them play the lead.
And let's not forget: Boring is affordable, which means the budget will leave enough room to purchase that one beautiful design chair. You can be sure any iconic design will receive all the attention it deserves as long as it is surrounded by the Boring collection.
Boring is a deceivingly simple design that can inflict great change. It will bring an end to slow delivery times, because all the components of the collection are always on stock: that is the great advantage of a design that is available only in grey. And following a design brief has never been this easy, since Boring furniture meets all of the requirements.
It sounds a little idealistic, but Boring is a way to make the world a better place. In short, Boring Collection will help create a more pleasant workplace experience. Our offices will no longer feel like the dreaded place where time has to pass as fast as it possibly can, but can instead turn into a breeding ground where new unexpected things materialize and where everything is possible. From nine till five, that is.
Boring fact
The name Boring started as a joke in 2015. Friends remembered it better than the name of the architecture office itself.
Remi Versteeg and Stijn de Weerd at the Rigakade, 2024. Photo RVDA.
The designers
Designed by Beyond Space, Amsterdam
Boring Collection® is designed by Remi Versteeg and Stijn de Weerd, architects and founders of Beyond Space, an Amsterdam studio for architecture and interiors. The collection started in their own projects: offices they had designed with care, filled afterwards with furniture that wanted to be looked at. So they drew the furniture themselves. Every piece follows the same idea they bring to a building: find what the place really needs, make it well, and let it work without explanation.
Read more
That is why the collection is designed as a background. It has to sit in any interior, by any architect, and leave the attention to the people, the plants and the work. The studio still designs every new Boring product, from the Future Desk to the Light, and still uses the collection in its own projects, next to the furniture of others.
More about the studio at beyond-space.eu.
2016. The first pictures.
The story
The 2016 catalogue by Sanne Beeren was nominated for Best Dutch Book Design. Every spread carried the line It is not about furniture.Boring fact
Made with others
Companies that agreed to make something grey for us.
Forbo mixed a Marmoleum in Boring grey and made a film about it. Dataflex makes the monitor arm and the cable guide. Fellowes the power outlet, Tarkett the carpet tile, Lernert & Sander the film and the tower. Each one on its own page.
In the press
Since 2016 Boring Collection has made every effort to remain invisible. Not everyone has respected that.
Azure, Design Milk, It's Nice That, Frame, Domus, NRC, Corriere della Sera and the rest, in order, with links.