Simple Home Office Design Tips
- Written by Diana Smith
In 2016, there is a staggering number of people working from home. If the statistics are to be believed, one fifth of all Americans and 12% of people in the UK. The rest of the first world countries follow in suit. Now, people who never worked from home believe that doing this means just sitting in your underwear, in your living room, with your laptop in the lap, while the TV is on. Whoever tried this knows just how silly it sounds. Same as in the actual workplace, at home you need a proper work environment, a home office and here are some simple tips for making a small home office.
Choose the right room
Sure, you may not have that much of a choice here and you will be forced to just take the room that is available, however you would do wise to go for a room not facing the street. In order to be able to focus on the work at hand you need as much peace and quiet as you can possibly get. This is why, some people also decide to do some extra insulation on their office in order to make it even more soundproof. All in all, another tip would be to take the room facing east (if possible), since in this way, you get most of the natural light early in the morning. As you can see, there are a lot of variables here, and if you have that option it is good to keep them all in mind.
Furnishing the office
Next step is of course preparing the room and furnishing the office. For the color of the walls, your safest choices are yellow, green and baby blue since these colors allow you to fully focus and have a positive impact on your productivity. Next, you need a proper hardware for your office, like reliable computers, printers and scanners. Finally, what you also need is the right furniture since if you are to spend 6 to 10 hours a day in the same chair, its quality is of crucial importance for your posture and overall health of your back. Also if you have carpets you can hire a carpet restoration specialist to make it looking even better than new. Last but not the least important, other furniture like getting a designer work desk or even a nice woolen rug are both optional but can make a difference.
Digital tools
Of course, whatever you do you need to have the right tools of the trade. However, in 21st century this means getting the right software for your office. Naturally, any investment in premium software is a good choice, but even if you choose to lead a frugal office there is always a way. What you can do is go for the open source software in your work. A perfect example of this is replacing MS Office with Open Office. Sure, some claim that MS Office is far superior, but when you take into consideration that Open Office is completely free, there is no doubt which of the two is more cost effective.
Storage Solutions
Finally, although we are living in a digital era, there are some things that you will simply have to store in physical form. This is why you need to find an adequate storage solution for you home office and you have to do it now. Sure, drawers, cabinets and shelves (even DIY) are all good ideas, but there will be some data that will be simply too valuable to be left in the open. This is why, your best course of action would be to buy a safe and put all these troubles behind you once and for all.
As you can already tell, none of these steps are two hard and in no way in correlation with the size of your room. The best thing about it is that by being systematic and following an elaborate plan, you can set up your home office in no more than couple of days (most of the work being done in the first several hours). The world is your oyster.
