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Designing a good home office is not always easy. It's a study of the room, the demands of your work, and your own personal style.
Often, the room you have to build an office out of doesn't have what you need to start with. You're likely starting with a guest bedroom designed to hold a small bed and dresser, not your desk and all your immediate storage needs.
You may need shelves, cabinets, filing cabinets, and locking storage depending on your job and the demands of your role.
One of the best things you can do to improve a home office is to build custom cabinetry. You can change the shape and essential functionality of a room, providing both the storage and the workspaces you need.
We've put together six highly useful ideas, any one of which might make your home office far more functional and enjoyable.
1) Build a Closet Into Secure Office Storage
The biggest storage dead-space in your average home office is the closet. Because home offices start as guest bedrooms, there's usually a closet that has a simple upper shelf and hanging bar.
This is nowhere near efficient for a home office. Fortunately, the space can be used in other ways. Instead of searching for shelves that fit into that space, why not build custom cabinetry to perfectly suit your home office needs?
The closet might be the perfect place to store your files and printer, or an archive of physical documents. You can build shelves where devices can dock, to hold office supplies, or to lock away items that need to be secured.
Custom closet solutions are nothing new, but yours can reflect the needs of your work.
2) Built-In Bookshelves
The most classic home office solution is the built-in bookshelf. Embedding bookshelves into your walls or creating a wall of emplaced shelving is not only useful, it's also elegant as a video conferencing background.
Built-in bookshelves can never be tipped over by a pet or child. They are easier to dust and can be designed to exactly suit your needs in terms of shelf sizing and sturdiness.
Built-in bookshelves transform the look and feel of a room. You can choose the wood, color, design, and details to shape the entire style of your home office.
3) Floating Shelves and Ceiling Lights
Floating shelves take less space than cabinets while helping to keep your surfaces clean and organized. You can have a desk surface and shelving occupying the same square feet of floor space.
Floating shelves are light and do not take up visual space, so they reduce the feeling of closeness in a smaller home office. If you're looking to create office storage in a smaller room, floating shelves allow dual-use of any section of wall.
Floating shelves up near the ceiling add an entirely new level of storage and potential decor to your home office. This space that we rarely look at can create visual depth for the office and give you storage in a rarely used space.
4) Murphy-Style Fold Away Features
Many home offices need to double as other rooms some of the time. Your home office might also be the guest room, yoga studio, backup playroom, or your craft room as well as the place where you work at home.
This can make it highly worthwhile to invest in murphy-style features. Fold-away desks, for example, can quickly clear your home office floorspace for other purposes.
Some murphy-style furniture can serve two or three purposes, depending on how you fold it. A desk might fold up into a shelf or flip-up into a whiteboard. Consider how you can multi-purpose, mount, and fold-away furniture in your home office.
5) Floating Desk Surfaces
You can also buy a lot of space with an installed floating desk. Rather than needing your desk's feet to make a rectangle on the floor, give yourself workspaces and custom cord-organizing desks by building custom floating desks along the walls.
There will always be plenty of room for your chair, footrest, under-desk storage, trashcan, or speakers because there are no legs to get in the way.
6) Disguised Locking Office Storage
Last but not least is secure storage. Some jobs require you to keep items that need to be locked away. Personal files, delicate equipment, and valuables may require locked and reinforced storage that most home offices are not equipped with.
One of the greatest benefits of custom cabinetry is that it can do all this and also disguise your secure storage. Build a safe compartment into something that looks like a normal shelf or armoire, or have a little fun with hidden compartments and sliding doors.
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Does your home office need a few functional and aesthetic improvements? Custom cabinetry can create secure, accessible, and decorative storage. It can win back floor space and make your home office an enjoyable multi-purpose room.
Cabinetry can make that closet useful and turn your ceiling space into useful real estate. Whatever you need from a home office, our team would be proud to make it happen. For more ideas or a custom consultation, contact us today!
