I’ve just moved into a new house and I work from home. Instead of sitting at the end of the bed at a small desk, I now have a decent sized room for an office. 🙂

Just now, I’m using the same small desk and a kitchen chair (not great for 8 hours) and I’m looking for inspiration/recommendations for setting up the office.

Do you work from home? What sort of chair do you have? Would you recommend it?

There is no floor covering and the walls are a yellowy white, so decorating inspiration would be nice too.

Desk is currently a cheap door on 2 saw benches, just a fraction too high but room for 2 big screens and a laptop and lots of paperwork. Got a cheap chair from a mate but a decent one is on the list. For me the next priority is a back screen for video conferencing, if you can find somewhere to hang a couple of shirts too so in emergency video confs you can do pants an shirt = respectable.

Seen some glass screen alternatives to white boards recently that look cool.

Would you recommend it?

It’s a double-edged sword and on balance I would prefer to work in a proper office (if I had one near enough to go to)

In terms of equipment, I assume work will be paying or are you self-employed? If the former, treat it like a normal office with all the requisite health and safety requirements that justify work paying for the right desk, chair, monitor stand etc. It makes a huge difference if you’re working in a comfortable environment

I’ve been working from home for about a year now and my wife also works from home (she has her own separate office too). So I don’t get the isolation thing that I know some people can get. All the developers at the company I work for work remotely too, so I’m not really missing out there either.

I’m happy to pay ~£250 for a chair. I’ll be sitting on it a lot. I’ve not found any decent reviews of office chairs though. Maybe I’ve not been looking in the right places, but I thought it would’ve been easier to find reviews of home office furniture.

I work from home 4 days out of 5. I use the smallest bedroom as my office and if I’m in here during my office hours, I’m not to be disturbed except for tea/coffee breaks, just like being in the office really

I have a “proper” computer desk with separate monitor shelf and a proper office chair – both from Staples (although other office furniture vendors are available). From my seat I can look out of the window without having to turn, as recommended. It’s a nice view.

Laptop, separate keyboard, mouse and telephone headset provided by work; connect to the VPN and I have a virtual phone in my laptop, using the same DDI & extension number as if if I’m in the office. So no telephone costs for me or work to meet. I already had the broadband before I started working from home so no further expense there either.

Would I recommend it? Yes, for me. Beats a 60 mile round trip through Bradford (twice) every day.

Have a look at Giroflex office chairs. I had them at the last office I worked in.
You can sometimes pick up chairs from office clear outs for around £100-150. They retail for a lot more.
They have good adjust-ability and are hard wearing and comfortable.

Yep, 3 out of 5 at home. My house has an old workshop that I converted into just an office/mancave thing. Plenty of natural light comes in from 2 windows and the big door.

Big Desk, Big Screen, Wireless keyboard/mouse, Printer/Scanner, extra light, Hifi (for Skype naturally), separate Skype Camera on the Big screen.

As above rules for disturbing me – tea/coffee/food/BJ only..

edit: proper office chair with swivel and tilt (you must)

If you need to use a phone a lot, don’t mess around with soft phones and headsets. Get a proper phone.

Cheapish Ikea swivel chair, about 90 quid and an opaque glass top dining table for the design studio look on a budget. A few inspirational bits on the wall – race numbers, maps, things the kids have done. My pinboard actually has very little work on it! If I was buying a chair again I’d get one where the seat pan tips forward – helps stop your hamstrings shortening. I get up even less that when I was in a proper office now.

Mate of mine works stood up a lot or sits on a gym ball!

A proper chair is worth it and anything you spend you can offset against tax as a business expense. Ditto lighting/heating/internet etc.

proper phones are great until you have to try typing and moving a mouse.

If you need to use a phone a lot, don’t mess around with soft phones and headsets. Get a proper phone.

Agree. I’ve never been a big fan of using softphones, especially if you have to pack it all up to go to the office occasionally.

These days I mostly work in the office as it’s fairly close by and gets me out of the house. I spend a lot of time on conference calls and there’s only one thing worse than IP/soft phones on a bad connection – Americans on cell phones driving the kids to school.

proper phones are great until you have to try typing and moving a mouse

Headset?

I have a headset. it plugs into the laptop. when I do go into the office, where I have a real phone, I unplug the headset & leave it at home. nothing extra to carry around

proper phones are great until you have to try typing and moving a mouse.

Hands-free. I use a Cisco phone that uses my broadband. It is a very conventional looking office phone with a very good speaker so a doodle to use hands-free without the hassle of a headset.

Thanks for the tips. I only get interruptions for tea/coffee/lunch/BJs/both kids doing mega poos at the same time (you know, when it escapes the nappy and shoots off over the changing mat)

I barely have to talk to people 🙂 and then, Skype generally does the trick.

I like the look of Giroflex chairs, definitely have to go second hand for one of them. Any other chair recommendations?

In my home office room now sat next to the road bike, the turbo bike, and the TT bike, a turbo, and a set of rollers. Quite handy for some sneaky lunchtime training 🙂

Just join your local Freecycle group – everything you need will pop up pretty regularly….

Desk. Any old flat surface thats the right height and big enough for what you want, mines home made.

Chair. The very best you can afford. I got an unused 2nd hand chair made by human scale, very comfy.

Phone. I have a regular land line that accepts a headset, it’s panasonic phone.

Keyboard is wired because it stays in one place and doesn’t need batteries.

Mouse is wireless with rechargeable batteries.

I also use a trackpad. Mouse on the right trackpad on the left, they get used interchangeably.

Couple of monitors, 12GB Raid array for storage.

I’ve been working at home for 14 years now.

I’ve got a Herman-Miller aero chair. Desk is made from an Ikea worktop fitted into an alcove. I’ve got a hard plastic mat for the chair to roll on and not trash the carpet

I don’t do video con-calls, so can work in my pants (but I don’t)

I don’t do video calls either. I’m sat here in t-shirt, shorts & vans. Couldn’t get away with that in the office or on video.

The software phone / headset is perfectly adequate for my needs. When I’m in the real office, if I want to type/mouse while on the phone, it has to go on speaker – which can be annoying for the other guys in the office, but as we’re rarely all in at the same time it’s no big deal

and another thing… the real office doesn’t have a Tassimo machine 😉

oh, and one other thing. Don’t forget to tell your home insurance company. Shouldn’t make any difference to your premiums, but if you don’t tell them and you do end up having to claim, there’s room there for them to wriggle out of paying

Thanks for all the replies.

I’ve ordered a Steelcase Leap for sitting on. The kitchen chair is doing my back in.

Homeworking is the future. Old desk, £30 chair, broadband internet. Beats paying £4k a year for commuting into London on overcrowded trains.

Yeah but what do you all do? I’m a developer and would love to work from home more than the 1 day a week i can at the moment.

Software developer (mostly web based)

Software developer. Manufacturing company

Some invaluable advice in the video below.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk[/video]

software developer / tester. home working for last, oh, 6 or so years. Lucky to have separate room (in garden). Gets a bit that I miss coffee machine banter sometimes, but ability to nip out for a 2 hour spin when its nice is compensation.

Decent chair, *monitor*, broadband, heating, coffee, air supply, take regular breaks and exercise.

Hag chair here, excellent.

There’s a company on eBay selling refurbished (i.e. new foam new trim re upholstered) Giroflex G64s for £160 delivered, as its a proper £500 chair I thought that inspired by this I’d give it a go,

Mine is an eBay refurb too. £115 delivered.

Quick update…

The chair is really good. Only a couple of marks on the controls and wheels. Padding and covers are all removable and have been washed. Plenty of adjustments too. I’m quite skinny, I think you could nearly fit two of me side by side in it though.

As an extra bonus, it’s a sunny day today so I had my lunch in the garden. The wife and kids are at grandmas, so I took the bike out to the closest forest. The secret~ish BMX track is really coming along nicely 🙂