home office help

10 years ago

we're breaking ground next week and already had our red line meeting, but today i got on the kick of trying to plan our home office in terms of furniture layout and i'm stuck.

the office isn't as big as we wanted it, but for exterior elevation symmetry purposes, we ended up with roughly 15.7 x 11.7 with one 4' wide window off-center and a closet that's roughly 2x4. we've got french doors opening into the room. you can see all this on the floor plan below.

anyway, here's the dilemma. DH and i both work from home and have several computers/monitors in use at all times. so his #1 priority is having a large L-shape work station. my #1 priority is a tie between being situated so that my desk is looking out the window, and having a really pretty space. a secondary preference is to be situated as far away from each other as possible and not facing each other (sorry honey!) just for the times when we have conflicting conference calls!

originally (in my head) i figured we'd have built-in wrap around desks from the closet wrapped along exterior wall and then wrapped again maybe 6' along the foyer wall. but our window goes down to about 18" above floor height, so the desk counter would have to drop way down, and i think breaking the surface height would emphasize the lack of symmetry on that wall, so then i started trying to find other solutions and got overwhelmed.

we wanted a closet to store files and un-pretty stuff and thought maybe our modem and data connections would go in there but they can't. so i'm wondering if we should get rid of the closet or move it or if you have suggestions on how to achieve our key objectives. the window size and position is 100% fixed and can't change. french door size and location as well as closet are much more flexible.

do you have a 2-desk home office? or feeling creative and want to play with some different layouts? i'm all ears (err, eyes?)

thanks!

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Comments (4)

aklowry
10 years ago
What about doing a built-in corner desk along the foyer/front wall (for DH) as you'd previously mentioned? Then, instead of doing a built-in closet, you could purchase a nice storage-type armoire to put on the wall with the French doors. Depending on the size, you might need to shift the doors a little to the left.

You could then put your desk on the wall the currently holds the closet, but with the short side of the desk against the wall. That way, you could sit with your back to the armoire/doors and facing the windows. You would be looking at DH's back, but could always flip to the opposite side of the desk if it was a distraction on certain days.

You could do built-in bookshelves to the right of the window and then add a nice comfy chair in front for creative thinking/reading/clients/etc. Between the bookshelves and the armoire, perhaps that would be enough storage (both open and hidden)?

Have fun planning the space!
chispa
10 years ago
Have you searched for inspiration photos on houzz.com?
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done_again_2
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I work from home and my other half does some of the time. We tried using the same office but it did not last more than a few weeks. Noise is the biggest issue. Even if you're not on calls at the same time it's hard to focus and concentrate while the other is. If you work together then maybe it makes more sense. With all the computers/monitors it's not going to look the prettiest. My two suggestions are setting up cubicle style offices in the same room or relocating one office to another part of the house.
maggiepie11
Original Author
10 years ago
thanks everyone!

lot23 - i like the idea of an armoire perhaps instead of a closet. then it's more flexible but still storage! i don't think we'll need double storage and am toying with extra seats in the leftover space.

chipsa - i've most definitely stalked houzz for ideas, but i've always come back to the window problem where i think it looks best to have the desks built into and around the window but in our case the window drops down too low so that's been throwing me off.

doneagain - great, honest feedback! totally agree on seeing all the monitors, but it is what it is. we actually work for two different companies but share a very small office right now (with tile floors and no textiles even!) and for the most part we're minimally disruptive to each other. and i like to pace laps around the house when i'm on a call a lot of the time anyway. i think instead of designing around conference calls, i just need to get my headset fixed. :)

so one of my issues that kept stumping me is that it doesn't look nice if it's not symmetrical around the window, but i think i realized that i can cheat the assymetry with strategic placement of window treatments and doing custom length desks to trick the eye. this is what i'm currently thinking - the wall with the french doors is missing to make it easier to see into the room in the 3D rendering. also, the closet could easily be switched to an armoire instead. thoughts on this layout? it's not 100% perfect on any of our wish list, but i think it's "close enough" on all of it. (hubby has his L-shape layout, i'm kind of in a position to look out the window if i arrange my workstation, we're not facing each other, and pushing everything to the corners definitely looks better in a small space than all the floating arrangements i tried)

(PS: not sure why the chairs are 2 different colors switching from 2D to 3D haha)