Designing A Home Office

Setting up an office at home is a wonderful option for those people who are self-employed and like to work from their residence itself. If you have decided to set up a work space at your home, you need to make a design for the same. The first step towards designing a home office would be to find out the appropriate space. There are number of possible locations in an average home, which can be converted into an office. After settling on the exact location, you need to work upon the design and interiors of your office. To know more about designing a home office, go through the following lines.

How To Design Your Home Office

* Start making the design of your home office by estimating its overall perimeter. Now, add in the partition walls, if any, windows and doors to the design.

* You need to make sketches of equipments that you are going to use in your home office. The basic items you need to accommodate include supplies (printer supplies, paper, file folders, pens and pencils, paper clips, stapler, note pads etc), PC or laptop, storage containers, file cabinet or closet, copy/printer/fax machine and telephone.

* Make an estimate of the size and number of furniture items that you are going to use in your home office. Calculate the dimensions - the length and width of each piece of furniture.

* Include the doors, windows and shelving into the design of your home office. Ensure that you make correct estimate of their measurements.

* Your PC will need a dedicated space in your home office. Choose a desk in which the computer equipments, including keyboard, monitor, printer, UPS and CPU, can comfortably fit in.

* Making an estimate of the power needs is another important task, while designing a home office. A cost-effective method of using the electronic items is to combine some of your office equipment needs. For instance, instead of installing separate printer, scanner and copy machines, you can have a multi-function machine that can perform all the three tasks.

* Lighting should also be included in the plan. Incase the present lighting is inadequate for work needs, include an overhead lighting fixture in your home office design. Apart from this, you need to make a sketch of the location of the plug points in the room.

* The importance of ventilation is often overlooked by people, while designing a home office. Since heat will be generated by the equipments used in the office, you should pay special attention to the ventilation aspect of the area. Installation of exhaust fan and air conditioning system should also be mentioned in your plan.