Home Office Remodel design

What the room has to do

A home office remodel is joinery plus a lighting plan. The desk becomes part of the wall, the storage goes vertical, and — since half the room's job is now being a background — the wall behind the chair gets as much thought as the one in front of it.

Layout rules

• A built-in desk wants 28–30in of depth for a monitor at a comfortable distance.
• Allow 36in behind the desk for the chair to roll back.
• Set the desk at 29–30in; a counter-height run at 36in is a standing desk, not a sitting one.
• Position the desk so a window falls to the side, never behind the screen or behind the chair.
• Leave 15in of clear worktop beside the monitor for anything on paper.

Lighting plan

Three jobs: task light on the desk surface, a soft frontal source at face height for calls, and something on the back wall so the video background has depth. A downlight overhead does none of these and creates screen glare.

What usually goes wrong

• The desk facing a window, so the camera exposes for the light and the face goes dark.
• Shelving stopped at picture height, wasting the most useful storage in the room.
• No cable route, so the back of the desk is the view from the doorway.
• A hard-surfaced room that echoes on every call.

In a small one

In an alcove under 6ft wide, run the desk the full width and take the shelving to the ceiling above it. A freestanding desk in a small office wastes the two inches at each end that make it feel built-in.