ARTICLES
Welcome home to the office: How to create a home study
"Most home offices start as little more than a pen pot with a nail file, a broken ruler and three chewed pens."
Does your home become an office or does your office become a home? Working from home has never been the easiest thing to do. And it’s not just about the distractions of the biscuit tin and washing pile, although that doesn’t help.
Creating an environment to help make sure you don’t become distracted is one thing. Finding the space to do it is another.
You may have a room that is earmarked “study”. But is that what you do in it? The word conjures up smoky images of walls lined with leather-bound books, sitting neatly and proudly on oak shelves, classical brass fittings and an oversized clear and tidy desk. What is more probable is a stack of papers that you keep moving around, an odd assortment of books you haven’t got around to sorting and a pen pot with a nail file, a broken ruler and three chewed pens. Of course, only one of these pens will actually work and every time you go to use one you’ll end up playing Russian Roulette.
Or maybe the study is a desk on the landing, surrounded by the hubbub of the household, forcing you to retreat into a cupboard with a torch.
So, the first problem we all face when trying to set up a place to work from home is space. (For the record, as someone who is self-employed, my studio is in my home. And I work. Hard. Given the new normal way of working, the derogatory insinuation that very little work takes place when you’re at home, has now been assigned to the wastepaper basket. It’s official.)
The second issue comes down to ergonomics. I love the photos of pretty chairs in soft velvets, placed at a jaunty angle next to an antique writing desk no bigger than a shoe box. But in the land of reality it doesn’t work. Even if you don’t drop your fountain pen on the chair, or your children don’t sit on their chocolate biscuit, it will give you trapped nerves, shoulder pain and aggravate sciatica - I can attest to that. Everything from the height of your desk, the shape of your chair, the juxtaposition to a window, and the position of your keyboard has to be taken into consideration. It all matters.
Then comes the storage. I’m a stickler for clean surfaces and am forever chasing my family waving forgotten sunglasses and random bits of paper dumped on the breakfast bar, demanding: “Are these your’s?” It’s annoying for me and in turn I annoy everyone else. But a cluttered environment is a stressful one, and so your home office needs to have storage, and plenty of it. Even in this paperless world, letters come through the door, magazines stack up and printer paper is required. A drawer for pens, elastic bands, staplers, odd coins, and the strange looking piece of plastic that surely belongs to something, is very useful. If that’s untidy it doesn’t matter. Just shut it. Which, come to think of it, is exactly the approach my husband takes to his study.
Finally, comes the part we love to think about – how to make it look the way we want it to look, whether that’s the leather-topped bureau and rich red walls to help you feel studious and cosseted, or a light and bright space to read in and make you feel you have room to breathe. Where in the house your workspace is located, and what natural light it has, will have a huge bearing on the design you choose, including the colours and lighting.
So much to consider. And you thought having a laptop meant you could work anywhere!
