The humble break room: your employees are glad to have one, you’re glad to provide a place for your workers to rest and recharge, and yet it’s not typically a room that’s given a lot of thought or attention to its design. If you want to keep your employees as comfortable and productive as possible during the workday, we’ve got a few tips here to help plan and design the perfect employee break room:

Free Healthy Snacks and Coffee: The first thing most workers will look for in a break room is the coffee pot, followed closely by a snack machine of some kind. Providing these on the house is a great way to encourage employee morale and motivation, and it allows you to provide healthier fare than the stuff that might come in a vending machine. Nuts, dark chocolate, and yogurt will be better for your employees than chips and candy cars, and will help keep their energy levels up through the day.

Provide Entertainment: After a long day in your workplace, whatever it is you do, your employees will welcome a distraction. Giving them something else to focus on and think about will keep them fresh and motivated for the rest of the workday, and prevent early employee burnout. Hang up some TVs in the corner and provide some magazines or reading material to let your workers shift gears and decompress better. If you’re really feeling generous, something like a fooseball or air hockey table would be particularly effective here.

Make Sure Everyone Has Space: The point of a break room gets diminished if everyone is too crowded next to each other – everyone needs their space, right? Standing bar tables are a good way to create ‘islands’ around the break room and make sure everyone has an area to call their own while on break, and industrial wire shelving can be used to give people a place to keep their personal belongings while on break to free up space elsewhere.

Above All, Keep Everyone Comfortable: Of course, all the free snacks and fancy TVs in the world won’t help an employee break room if there’s nowhere to sit! Make sure the seating in your break room is both comfortable for everyone, and plentiful enough that nobody feels crowded or has to compete for space. After all, we’re all in this together, and if your employees can’t even relax in your break room, you’re going to have much bigger problems elsewhere in the workplace.