5 Essential Points When You Designing Home Office

To be successful working at home, you need a personalized, ergonomically designed home office. 

It’s time to stop hosting Zoom meetings from the dining room table and taking conference calls on the couch. While you can make do like that for a while—and indeed, and the beginning, that probably sounded pretty great—a dedicated, well-designed workspace is crucial to making working from home sustainable and productive.

Here are five essential points when you designing your home office:

PLAN YOUR WORKSPACE

Whether your home office is a separate room or a corner of the den, the desk is the most crucial piece of the puzzle.

How big the desk should be depends on how much equipment you use—do you work exclusively on a laptop or plug-in to a set of monitors? Do you need extra space to review printed documents? Do you need a printer nearby or room for an external drive or speaker? How many drawers do you need—and what size? Where will the networking equipment go?

If you and your spouse will share a space, a double desk with a divider may be the best solution. If the space you have is on the small side, consider a built-in worktop with modular storage cabinet.

CHAIR

Many of us spend up to a third of our day at our desks, so having a chair that is both comfortable and ergonomic should be a priority. Your chair should support the curve of your spine, and when you sit in it, your feet should rest flat with your thighs parallel to the floor. Your arms should rest gently on the armrests with your shoulders relaxed. And when scooted up to your desk, your hands should be at or below elbow level on the keyboard.

LIGHTING

Lighting is often an afterthought when planning any room, but especially in a home office, it’s one of the most important elements. The strongest source of light is ideally to the side of your monitor, not directly in front or behind—if you have a large window, place your desk perpendicular to the window wall.

PAINT COLOR

As in any room, the paint color you choose for the walls affects and is affected by the lighting in the room—but did you know the color of your wall paint can also affect your mood and productivity?

Different colors influence not only mood but human behavior. Blues are said to stimulate the mind and help people focus, making them more productive. Yellows evoke feelings of happiness and stimulate creativity. Green makes people feel more balanced, calm, and reassured, and brown suggests strength and power.

Not only the shade but the intensity is important. Choose lighter shades so that they don’t overwhelm the room, or use a stronger color on an accent wall. And whatever you do, stay away from red hues, which suggest urgency, anxiety, and worry—definitely not the feelings you want to have when stuck in your home office all day!

VIDEO-CONFERENCE BACKGROUND

Video meetings are here to stay—what do you want your clients and colleagues to see when you log on? When setting up your space, it’s not enough to consider what you’ll be looking at (behind the computer monitor), but what your computer camera will see—and this is related to every aspect above.