Creating Your Own Home Office

Five steps to creating your perfect home office

You may be thinking of turning part of your home into an office.  With the rapid rise in home working, many of us are finding it necessary to avoid distractions from family life.  A home office could be the solution to remaining productive and retaining your job.

If you’re about to get to work on creating your home office, here are five steps you can follow.

Flooring and walls

Don’t underestimate the importance of a good hard-wearing floor in your office space. There are good options for most budgets, with the cost of laminate flooring and vinyl flooring at the lower end of the scale, and solid wood and tiles on the higher end.

Walls should be kept simple and light.  With video calls becoming the norm in home working situations, your backdrop should look professional.  That doesn’t mean you can decorate it with a few nicely hung pictures or a shelf of hardback books, but try to keep away from busy patterns and lots of personal clutter.

Lighting

Whilst you don’t want office-style fluorescent strip lighting in your home office, you do want a good amount of light to work in.  A good mix of natural light and artificial light is ideal. A ceiling light that throws out lots of bright light and a desk lamp that can be adjusted to target light where you need it, makes good sense.

Furniture

Don’t just buy the cheapest office furniture you can find.  It will make your working life so uncomfortable.  Desks and chairs that are ergonomically designed, will save you so much backache and joint pain! Look for furniture that is adjustable, that offers support, and gives you enough space to work around.  Footrests and tiltable desktops may be useful extras.

Communication

Making sure you have a good setup at home will help you stay in contact with your office and colleagues.  But most importantly, you don’t want lots of technical hiccups when you’re trying to attend meetings or talk to clients.  An extra screen for video calls, switching to a reliable internet service and adding extra power points are all worth considering.

Comfort

Finally, a comfortable working space shouldn’t be taken for granted. You may want to consider a comfy chair for little breaks from the desk, and perhaps a little coffee station for keeping fuelled. This could also be useful for occasions when you have a client or colleague over.  It avoids having to entertain them in the family kitchen and keeps things nice and professional.

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Girl on Fire

Photographer at Loudmouth Photography

Brandy is the wife to a carpenter/musician and the mother of 3 amazingly awesome homeschool/unschooled girls. Brandy is a Photographer as well as a Coach for the Weebellion as part of Rolling Rebellion Jr. Roller Derby. Brandy is passionate about many things and suffers from a very painful and degenerative neurological disease called CRPS/RSD.

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