No surprises finding help creating home office spaces filling our inbox in 2022! Many of us have had to adapt our living spaces to accommodate working from home and those temporary setups involving paperwork all over the dining table or a laptop on the guest bedroom dresser are starting to feel a little tired. So how do we make the new "work from home" normal fit with our interior aesthetics in homes that weren't built for offices?
Featured images left to right: Gravity Home and Centsational Girl, Cathy Phillips & Co, Hugh Jefferson Randolph Architects
Office in a cupboard! The cupboard under the stairs so often turns into a disorganised dumping ground, but it is a prime area for re-modelling into an intimate office space. You can squeeze some functional storage into the parts with little headroom and stack up those shelves where you have the extra height. You can even fit doors so you can shut away your work space at the end of each day. If your under stairs space won't be practical in your home, why not utilise a section of built in wardrobe for your hideaway office? When the doors are closed this makes your office space indistinguishable from the welcoming bedroom people love to relax in.
Featured images left to right: Emerson Grey Designs, Apartment Therapy, Making Spaces
Dead space offices! We all have them, hiding in the forgotten areas of nearly every home you will find an area of dead space. An awkward corner, that part of the living room that's a bit too far away to be included in the seating area. A home office is a great way to make constructive use of dead space in your home.
The image on the left above features a wall office made by mounting shelves and a desk against a partition wall in a living/dining space. This keeps the office almost entirely hidden and separate from the living area without taking up too much space from the dining area and maintaining the open plan feel of this home.
The centre image is of an attractive little office area built into an alcove. You have to be a very tidy worker to make this work in such a strong focal point in your room as well as having excellent discipline not to be distracted by work during down time or visa versa.
The right hand image is an office on a landing space. This is a perfect spot for a quiet working area in a classically dead spot. Unless someone in your home likes to peal away from the crowd to a quiet reading nook, this is an area of the home that is so often overlooked. If you are lucky enough to have a landing window, like in the feature image, the natural light is a huge bonus for a dead space office.
Zenterior Design Boutique Penthouse Project 2021
Open plan corner office! This is an office area that we built into an awkward corner in our Boutique Penthouse project. The key to open plan spaces working really well is for there to be both organic flow through the space and distinct zones that make each area feel contained, comfortable and cosy. We used backlit cladding to create the boundaries of the office zone here as well as a gorgeous feature in the room as a whole.
Wherever you choose to create your home office nook, make sure it is a comfortable space that you enjoy spending time in.