When you’re working from home, you often have to design your own working space. Take your lead from classic office design touches to create a productive working area.
You might be choosing to work from home to avoid the offices. But trying to create a working space that works for you from scratch can be tough – especially if you have to do so in a spare bedroom or corner of the dining room.
So take so ideas from classic office design and apply them to your home to get the best of both worlds.
Uniform lighting
Spending hours staring at a computer monitor can play havoc with your eyes. And it’s made worse when you have to deal with patches of light and shadow. While such lighting is fine for a living room, where you can use lamps to create cosy spots, it’s not ideal for working.
It should come as no surprise that the majority of offices come with flat, uniform, overhead lighting. This reduces the contrast between screen and the room, making it easier to move from looking at your computer to elsewhere and reduce eye strain.
Cubicle privacy
While open plan offices are much more common these days, even some of these will have tables sectioned off from others or small barriers between workers. These divides help create a sense of your own space in an office and allow you some privacy from the various office distractions.
Having one desk at home means putting in a cubicle set up is pointless, but it is important to have your own set working area. This could be a room set aside for work or using things like bookshelves, plants or even curtains to section off the area you want to work from in a larger room.
Large desks
Open plan offices give people a sense of space and freedom. A big part of this is the large desk space you get in most offices. Large desks allow you to spread your things out, meaning your working space feels less cluttered and is easier to manage.
If you’re finding yourself being squeezed into a small section of the dining table at home, or your home office is the box room, you might find it harder to concentrate as your desk area gets cluttered. Go big with your desk at home to give yourself space to breathe.
Comfy chair
Ergonomics is a big design feature that has taken off in office interiors in the past few decades. Yet much of the concept – that furniture should be designed to complement the body and how it moves – hasn’t really spread to home offices.
And this is especially apparent in many remote workers choice of chair. Sitting for right hours at a time can be hard on your body, even with a good office chair. But if you’re sitting on a dining chair then it’s even worse. If you’re going to buy one item for your home office it should be a proper office chair.
Posted by the Secret Businessman