Things to consider when buying a whiteboard for your workplace, home or school
Despite the huge digitisation of pretty much anything, there is still a place for have large highly visual elements close at hand for quick and easy reference. It is especially good for group projects and brainstorming.
A white board is perfect for this. Reusable and available in many variations it can make all the difference to your working or educational life, whether you need it for creative sessions and ideation, or for reminders of tasks and progress.
Location, location, location
The first consideration will always be to decide where you are going to put the whiteboard. Of course if you have the luxury of space, or for example a fixed place where it will be used (such as the front of a classroom for example), a wall mounted whiteboard will be perfect.
However, space is not always available. For example in a home office you might not have a wall space big enough for what you need, or if it were wall mounted you might not be able to reach it to write on over the furniture in the room.
Luckily, there is such a wide variety to choose from. A portable tabletop board might be better in the home, because it is easy to move around with you to different spaces you like to work in or placed next to your computer or laptop as you work.
If a tabletop whiteboard is not quite right, then you can always opt for a free standing one, that are also still portable and come on a tripod or on wheels. Some of the larger boards also rotate so you can use both the front and the back for even more creative space for your work or class. They can also help create whitespace for you to project images up onto the board when needed.
Many different types to choose from
While whiteboards are perfect for the office for meetings and presentations, there is also the choice of more tradition black or green chalk boards.
Blackboards look especially effective for displaying information in a stylish way – think for example the specials menu in a restaurant. Green chalk boards are often preferred by schools for use with real chalk (which can be cheaper than whiteboard markers – as long as you don’t mind the chalk dust).
Of course for ease of writing and erasing, and general cleanliness, whiteboards are typically better and require minimal maintenance. And you have the option of picking a magnetic board, which allows you to also display documents on the board and work around them, like a detective solving a crime in the movies. The price difference between magnetic and non-magnetic is minimal so is definitely an option worth considering.
Cleaning and maintenance of your whiteboard
When you have chosen your board and had it delivered, you can almost guarantee that someone will write on it in permanent marker. It is one of the sure things that happen in life, kind of like death and taxes.
A good trick for getting rid of permanent ink is to first write over it with one of the whiteboard dry erase markers, and then rubbing it off. This should remove all or most of it.
Any ink that is left can be rubbed off with a cloth and a little alcohol. It might take several goes but eventually it will come off. General cleaning is far easier, just use a cloth with a little whiteboard cleaner or warm water and wipe dry. It also helps to prevent marks to have decent quality dry erase markers, a decent eraser and try to wipe off unneeding information as soon as you can to make it easier to remove.
