With winter now undeniably fast approaching and the weather starting to turn, our daily drive to the office is undeniably starting to get harder. As such now is the ideal time to be thinking about your options for working from home. Do you have a home office setup ready to go? If not can you work from home more rather than driving in the ice and bad weather?
If you don’t have an office setup at home, but have the option to work from home, then now is the time to be thinking about shopping for office furniture before the expense of Christmas gets in the way, and you are stuck at home unable to get to the office because of the weather making the roads unusable.
Choosing a desk
We have written before in some length about choosing the right desk for your home office, and you can find our detailed guide here.
There are two main questions that you need to understand the answer to when deciding what desk to go for. There are practical considerations you should make beyond asking yourself do I like the look of that desk and does it fit in with the décor.
The first thing it is important for you to do is understand the space you have available for your desk. It is important to remember that to measure to the skirting board and not the wall as that will impact your measurements slightly. You also need to allow at least 75cm for you to push you chair back and get out from the desk, ideally allowing 90cm if you can.
As a bit of a pro tip, once you have identified the space you have available for a desk, we recommend marking out the space on the floor with masking tape. Doing this will help you visualise the space your desk will occupy and how it will fit in the chosen location.
The other key consideration is understanding how you will use your desk. The size and type of desk you require will change significantly depending on how you are planning on using it.
For a simple setup with just a laptop a standard straight desk is ideal, you can easily get away with a more compact option that doesn’t take up too much space. If you are planning on a dual monitor setup to be used 5 days a week then you should give serious consideration to a corner desk. This will give you much more room for your setup and also significantly improve the ergonomics of it, making your home working experience much more comfortable.
Choosing a desk chair
The other key item of furniture you are going to require for your new home office is a suitable desk chair. If you are going to be using your desk on a regular basis then a chair repurposed from elsewhere at home is very unlikely to be comfortable or practical for sitting at for 8 hours a day.
As we have done for desks, we have written a detailed buying guide to help you choose the right office chair – you can read it here
The key to choosing the right office chair is again, understanding how you are going to be using it and not just whether or not it looks good in the room. How you are going to use it will also impact the budget required for it.
If you are expecting to only use your new computer chair lightly, then a simple operator chair will suffice. These are an entry level product designed for light to medium use.
However, if you are going to be sat at your workstation for extended periods of time working away, then you will be better off upgrading to a task chair. These follow the same basic principles as an operator chairs, but offer increased levels of adjustment to provide better support over the day, typically including adjustable lumber support so your back and spine are properly supported for the full day.
For anyone whose working day consists of a lot of video calls and meetings on Microsoft Teams of Zoom, then you will be better off looking at an executive chair. These are more grand in their stature and are designed for long periods of sitting, without necessarily having the support for working at a PC.
Because of their design, which is very much focussed on impressing and luxury, executive chairs typically come in a more premium range of materials and finishes. Leather and faux leather options are both very common and popular and help bring a sense of opulence and class to the setting.
Hopefully having read this you now have a better understanding of what to consider when looking to set up a home office and choose your office furniture for it. If you still have questions then there are links to our more comprehensive buyers guides above. Also, our friendly furniture experts are more than happy to help – just get in touch and they will do their best to answer any questions you may have, either on choosing the right item, or the specifications of a particular product.
