Most homes do not have a spare room to turn into an office, and the ones that do usually need it for something else. The workable answers are smaller than a room: a built-in desk along one wall of a bedroom, a run of joinery in a living area, a workspace built inside a wardrobe that closes at the end of the day, a landing or hallway that is wider than it needs to be, or the space under a staircase.
All of those work. What makes them work is that the joinery is built to the space rather than bought to fit it, which is the difference between a desk that fills a corner and a desk that uses one.
This guide covers where a home office can go, how much desk you actually need, what has to be stored and what has to be hidden, and the practical details that are difficult to add afterwards.
Where can a home office actually go?
A spare bedroom
The obvious answer, and the one most people cannot use, because the spare room is a guest room, a nursery or storage.
Where it is available, built-in joinery along one wall gives you a desk, shelving and closed storage in the depth of a wardrobe, leaving the rest of the room usable. That combination, a work wall plus a sofa bed or a fold-down bed, is what makes a spare room genuinely dual purpose rather than notionally dual purpose.
A corner or wall of a bedroom
Common, and better than its reputation, provided two things are true. The desk needs to be far enough from the bed that the room still reads as a bedroom, and the work needs to be able to be put away. A desk covered in paperwork at the foot of a bed is a poor result for both jobs the room is doing.
Built-in joinery helps here specifically because it can be designed with closed storage at eye level, so the working clutter disappears behind a door rather than being visible from the pillow.
Inside a wardrobe
Building a workspace into a wardrobe recess, with doors that close on it, is one of the more effective small-home solutions. The desk, the screen, the cables and the paperwork all sit inside a cabinet that shuts.
It suits people who work from home part of the week rather than all of it, because the depth available in a wardrobe recess makes for a compact desk rather than a generous one. The things to get right at the design stage are power inside the cabinet, ventilation if equipment stays in there, and doors that fold or slide clear so you are not working with a door in your peripheral vision.
A wall in a living area
A run of joinery combining a work surface with shelving and closed storage can sit in a living room, dining area or family room and look like part of the room rather than an office that has escaped.
The design objective here is different to a bedroom. In a living area, the storage above and beside the desk usually has to hold things that are not work: books, media, board games, the things a family room accumulates. The desk is one function within a wall of joinery, not the purpose of it.
A landing, hallway or wide passage
Older Sydney homes and some newer townhouses have landings and passages that are wider than circulation requires. A shallow built-in desk along one side turns that into a workspace without taking a room out of service.
The constraint is depth. A passage still has to function as a passage, so the desk is shallow, which suits a laptop and not much else. The other constraint is that a landing is a thoroughfare, which is fine for some work and impossible for other work.
Under the stairs
The space under a staircase is awkward by definition, which is exactly why built-in joinery suits it. A desk under the high end of the stair, storage under the low end, and the whole thing scribed to the raking underside.
Check what is already in there. Under-stair voids frequently carry services, and in some homes they are the meter cupboard or the only storage the house has.
How much desk do you actually need?
Less width than people specify, and more depth than they expect.
Width is set by what sits on the desk permanently. A laptop and a notebook needs very little. A large monitor, a keyboard and space to write beside it needs more. Two monitors changes the calculation again. Count what is on the desk today, not what could theoretically fit.
Depth is the one that gets underestimated. A desk needs to be deep enough that a screen sits at a comfortable viewing distance rather than close to your face, and shallow desks force the screen forward. If the joinery is going into a shallow recess, a monitor arm that pushes the screen back over the rear edge of the desk is worth planning for, because it needs a fixing point and it changes what the back of the joinery has to be.
Height matters more than either. A desk at the wrong height is uncomfortable in a way that gets worse over months. The working relationship to aim for is forearms roughly horizontal when your hands are on the keyboard, with feet flat on the floor. Because a built-in desk is fixed, this needs to be resolved at design rather than adjusted later. If more than one person will use the desk, or if you use a chair with limited adjustment, say so at the appointment.
What has to be stored, and what has to be hidden?
Two separate questions, and both change the joinery.
Storage is the volume: files, stationery, reference material, equipment, the printer. The printer is the item most often forgotten and it is the item that most often ends up on the floor. If you have one, decide where it lives before the joinery is designed, and remember it needs power and access to its paper tray.
Hiding is about what the space looks like when you are not working. This matters most where the office is in a room that has another job. Closed storage at desk level and above deals with most of it. A workspace that can be shut behind doors deals with all of it.
Open shelving looks good and stores badly for work. Files, folders and equipment are not decorative, and open shelving above a desk tends to fill with the things you look at least. A mix, with closed storage where the working material goes and open shelving where books and objects go, is usually the right balance.
Power, data and cables
This is the detail that separates joinery designed for a workspace from a desk with a power board under it.
Decide before manufacture:
• How many power outlets you need at desk level, and whether any equipment needs a permanent outlet inside a cupboard.
• Whether a data point is needed, or whether the room’s wireless coverage is genuinely adequate. In a double brick Sydney home, it frequently is not, and running a cable is far easier before the joinery goes in.
• Where cables pass through the work surface, so grommets can be positioned rather than drilled later.
• Whether the screen is wall mounted or on a stand, because a wall mount needs a fixing behind the joinery.
• Where a printer sits, and whether it needs its own outlet.
• Whether anything needs to charge overnight out of sight.
Any electrical work needs a licensed electrician, and it needs to be sequenced before the joinery is installed rather than after.
Lighting and where the screen faces
Two things determine whether a workspace is comfortable to sit at, and both are decided by the position of the desk rather than by the joinery.
Screen orientation relative to windows. A screen with a window directly behind it puts you looking into glare all day. A screen with a window directly behind you puts reflections on the screen. A screen at right angles to the window is the arrangement that works, and it is worth positioning the desk to achieve it even if another position looks tidier on a plan.
Task lighting. Ceiling lighting alone puts your own shadow on the desk. A light under a shelf or an overhead cupboard, positioned in front of where you sit rather than behind, solves it. If that light is being built into the joinery, it needs to be planned with the electrical work.
Worth also considering how the room is used in the evening, particularly in a bedroom or a living area where a bright task light is unwelcome once work is finished. A separate switch for the task light is a small thing that gets used every day.
Does a built-in office suit the kind of work you do?
Worth asking honestly before committing, because built-in joinery is fixed and different work has different requirements.
Laptop and calls, a few days a week. Almost any of the six locations above works. A compact desk in a wardrobe recess or a bedroom corner is sufficient, and the ability to close it is a genuine benefit.
Full-time desk work. Needs a position you can sit at comfortably for a long day, which means proper desk depth, a screen at the right distance, real task lighting, and a chair that fits under the desk. A shallow landing desk will not do this.
Work involving paper. Drawings, plans, contracts, marking, anything spread out. Needs surface area beside the screen and filing within reach, and it rules out the smallest configurations.
Creative or making work. Sewing, model making, craft. Needs a robust surface, more storage than a desk usually has, and often better lighting than an office. Also needs a surface you do not mind marking.
Work with confidentiality requirements. If your work involves client information, calls that others should not overhear, or documents that need to be secured, an open living area is the wrong place regardless of how well the joinery is designed. Lockable storage and a door are the requirements, and they should drive the location decision.
How do you plan for equipment that changes?
Screens get larger, printers get replaced, and the equipment on a desk in five years will not be the equipment on it today. Fixed joinery has to tolerate that.
Three things make it tolerant. Adjustable shelving, so a shelf can move when the thing under it changes. Slightly more power provision than you currently need, because outlets are cheap at construction and awkward afterwards. And a cupboard sized generously rather than exactly, because equipment built into a recess with millimetres to spare is equipment you cannot replace without a joiner.
The one thing worth over-specifying is cable capacity. Whatever route cables take through and behind the joinery, make it larger than today’s cable count requires.
What finish suits a work surface?
A desk top is used differently to a wardrobe door, so it is worth a separate thought rather than matching the doors by default.
The considerations are how the surface handles being written on, leaned on and wiped down, how it behaves with a laptop sitting on it for hours, and how it looks under a task light. A high gloss surface shows every mark and reflects light straight up at you, which is why it is a more difficult choice on a desk than on a wardrobe door. A matt or textured finish is generally more comfortable to work on and more forgiving.
Edge treatment matters more on a desk than anywhere else in the house, because your forearms rest on it. Ask what the front edge of the work surface is finished with.
If the joinery combines a desk with wardrobe or storage doors, the usual approach is to match the doors to the room and choose the work surface for how it performs. They do not have to be the same.
Two people, one workspace
If two people work from home in a house that has room for one desk, decide early whether you are building one desk used at different times or two positions used simultaneously.
They are different pieces of joinery. A shared desk used in turn can be a single generous surface. Two people working at once need two positions with visual separation and, more importantly, enough distance that two conversations are not happening in the same acoustic space.
Where two positions genuinely have to be in one room, the joinery can help by putting shelving or a storage tower between them, which breaks both the sight line and some of the sound.
Can joinery help with noise on video calls?
Partly, and it is worth being realistic about the extent.
Hard flat surfaces reflect sound, and a room with hard floors, plasterboard walls and little furniture is a room where your voice sounds hollow on a call. Books on shelves, closed storage, soft furnishings and a rug all reduce that. A wall of joinery with a mix of open shelving and closed cupboards is acoustically better than a bare wall.
What joinery cannot do is stop sound travelling from elsewhere in the house. If you take calls all day and the workspace is in an open living area, the joinery is not the solution to that. A door is. That is worth knowing before you decide where the office goes, because it may change the answer from a living room wall to a bedroom corner.
What to sort out before your design appointment
• What sits on the desk permanently, and what is put away.
• Whether the printer is in the joinery, elsewhere, or gone.
• How many people use the space, and whether at the same time.
• Where the windows are, and which way the screen will face.
• What power and data you need, and whether an electrician is already engaged.
• Whether the workspace needs to close, and how completely.
• Whether the room has another job to do, and what that job needs.
• Photographs of the space, including the ceiling and any services.
The next step
A built-in workspace is worth doing precisely because it is measured to the room, which means the design starts with someone standing in it. Impressive Wardrobes offers a free measure and quote for home office joinery as well as wardrobes, where a designer looks at the space, the light, the power and what you need to store.
Book your free measure and quote, or call (02) 9796 1022. You can also visit the showroom at 54 Canterbury Rd, Bankstown to see finishes and cabinetry at full scale.
