While many of us likely had laptop or desktop computers at home before the start of the pandemic, most of us had them in places that weren’t the most conducive to getting work done. With around 45% of workers doing their job at home in part or in full, it’s no wonder that so many of us need design ideas for home office spaces.
If you’ve been wanting to redesign your workspace but have felt strapped for ideas, then worry no more! Our guide will show you some nifty ideas that you can personalize for your own work needs.
Balance Clean Office Lines and Home Personalization
When you used to work in the office, (We know, it feels like so long ago!) did you feel like a beast of productivity? Or did it leave you feeling depressed and watching the clock, waiting for the chance to clock out and go home?
Traditional office spaces like the dreaded cubicle farms are something of a double-edged sword. They’re so specific to office environments that they can put our brains into “work mode” the moment we walk in. However, this often comes at the cost of personalization and our overall mental health.
Our suggestion? Find a balance between the clean, standardized lines of a traditional office and touches of your own personality, be it pictures or desk clutter that your job would never allow you to have.
Make Your Family Computer Room a Command Center
Is your one computer in the house positioned in a high-traffic family room? Are laptops or Chromebooks too far out of the budget for the time being?
You can turn your current home office into a multi-use office, a command center for the family. Post all your organizational charts and calendars for school, chores, and other household management tools in and around your desk. This can channel the feel of an office at work while providing useful information to everyone heading through the area.
Plus, you can point at the chart when one of your kids or your spouse asks you for the hundredth time whether it’s their turn to do the dishes or not.
Invest in a High-Quality Desk
If there’s one thing working from home for the past few years has taught us, it’s that the $30 desk you picked up from the big box store isn’t going to cut it. It feels cheap and flimsy. Worse, many of those desks are in awkward positions or simply don’t have the amount of real estate that you need for your supplies.
Anyone who works from home with a dual-monitor setup feels the pain of working around a too-small desk in their soul. In this situation, A decent standing desk or adjustable desk is a good option to make you feel comfortable.
So, when designing a home office, make sure that you choose a high-quality desk. Some options you might consider include:
- Standing desks, if you need to avoid sitting for too long
- Corner desks, which can slot into tight corners of your home and provide twice the desk surface
- Floating or foldaway desks, for when space is at an absolute premium
Position your new desk at the right height, and you can get productive while staying comfortable.
Don’t Neglect Your Chair
If you take no other home office ideas from this article, we beg you to leave with this one. Do not, we repeat, do not neglect your chair as part of your design process.
You can’t always work while sitting on the couch, nor should you. Nor will old, uncomfortable kitchen chairs or cheap office chairs stand up to 8+ hours of constant use.
A good desk chair is an investment, but trust us, your back and legs will thank you for the extra effort.
Make Your Desk Supplies Pop With Personality
One of the best design ideas for home office spaces, when you have a limited budget, is to make your office and desk supplies pop with your personality. No longer are you confined to the standard paperclips that your boss buys in bulk! You no longer have to use the same boring, beige filing system that’s been sitting at that cubicle for decades.
You can use shiny rose gold pen jars and paper clips. Make your filing system easier to parse with bright, vibrant tones of your favorite colors.
Move to a Home Office With a View
One of the things that tend to make us feel depressed when we work in a traditional office is feeling disconnected from the outside world. Unless you were lucky or at the executive level, you likely didn’t have an office with a view outside of a window.
So, one way to make your home office a dream office, as recommended in this article, is to locate it near a window with a nice view. You’d be surprised what seeing sunlight can do for your mental state.
Experiment With Partitioning
When the pandemic started, those of us with open-concept homes soon found ourselves cursing every single decision we’d made up to that point. How can you possibly focus when there’s no separation between your office and the TV room?
One way to get around this when designing a home office is to experiment with partitioning. Moveable walls can also be used. And no, we don’t mean with those gross cubicle walls. Consider rotating your desk so that it cuts itself off from the flow of the room. Or investing in a folding wall or curtained partition.
Give Statement Walls a Shot
If you want to separate your office space from the rest of the home without putting it in a separate room, consider giving it a statement wall in a vibrant pattern or color. If you own your home, you just need a coat of paint. However, if you rent, you can always use peel-and-stick wallpaper to get the same effect.
Looking for More Design Ideas for Home Office Rooms?
We hope that these design ideas for home office spaces gave you some inspiration to revitalize your own work-from-home routine. If so, and if you’d like to read more helpful articles like this one, then check out our blog for more content like this!
