With more and more people needing to work from home on the regular basis, a lot of people have struggled with designing their home offices.
The reality, however, is that most people don’t have an extra room to dedicate to a full-time office—especially if you live in a location where square footage is at a premium, like New York or San Francisco and other big cities across the globe.
But you don’t need a full room to have a stylish and productive work space.
The living room has a lot of unused space where you can always squeeze a desk and seat and make a perfect home office space.
Here are 7 spaces that you might have not thought about yet. You can go ahead and explore them and setup your next home office space.
While it’s all one room, the desk’s placement in an empty corner and the positioning of the sofa make a distinction between the two zones, work and play, without using a wall or divider. This makes it easier to drift from a day’s work into a defined relaxing social space.
Most houses also come with built-in storage. If you have built-in, stacked shelving in the living room – or right off it – this is the best way to carve out a storage-friendly nook, especially if your office tends to be on the more cluttered side. Instead of cutting out even more floor space with a dedicated bookshelf, place all your notebooks and supplies vertically above your desk.
If you have a large living area, carve out a space for a home office by placing a desk on its own, letting it “float” in front of a wall or credenza. This is a stylish way to create a formal office space even if you don’t have an extra room.
#OfficeDesignTip: Add a small rug to help clearly delineate the office from the rest of your living space.
The best of us have gotten all too comfortable typing away on the couch. If you’re not ready to completely let go of your leisurely work from home routine, use this space-saving trick and graduate to the back of the couch. This way you can still be in the comfort of your living room, but have a designated work spot. Plus, it’s a helpful hack if wall space is at a premium.
If you have a spare closet in the living room and if space affords, then that’s a perfect space to set up your home space. Instead of getting a freestanding desk, you can even mount a wide floating shelf to the wall to maximize space and more effectively push in a cozy chair.
A console can function nicely as a vanity and desk in any living room. They’re often narrow enough to be placed along walls in hallways and passageways leading to doorways.
Try adding a console near an entrance or hallway, as in this living room scenario, to turn a large empty wall area into a simple and functional office spot.
This is one of the areas which often goes unused, the bottom of your stairs makes a great spot to sneak in a workspace. With a little distraction and mostly you will definitely go unnoticed.
All in all, setting up an office space at home can be tasking. From getting furniture to putting it all together, not forgetting the destruction that comes from working from home. While there are so many advantages from cutting costs on commuting and saving time as well, there are also some disadvantages that come with WFH.
With more organizations also adopting Hybrid Work Model, maybe now you would want to consider the WNH model which may involve taking up space in a flexible workspace where you can pop in and when you don’t have to go to the office.
Flexible workspaces like Nairobi Garage offer you a plug and play model and what’s more, with locations across the city you get a wide option of spaces that you can work from as you get the flexibility as a member to work from all the four locations. You can book a tour of our spaces here or even join our community. It takes less than 10 minutes to set you up!