Present2Sell - By The Dart May 2010

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Home Office

You're not alone

In the last 13 years, over half a million more of us have started working from home, making the current total a surprising 3.5 million, an eighth of the whole workforce. With broadband, webcams and laptops, you really have to work at being cut off from the world these days!

Productivity

There's good science to show that a person's productivity is vastly enhanced if they are allowed some freedoms in decorating the space they work in (see http://www.prism-identity.com). A home office frees us to personalise our space in any way we want of course, but nonetheless, there are issues still to consider.

Positioning

Choosing where to sit therefore is a key question. Try this experiment: spend a few moments seated in your office chair in different positions in the room. Face each corner and each wall with a desk-sized space in front of you. Then try sitting in each corner and against each wall, looking into the room, and assess your responses. As you consider, bear in mind your proximity to a window for its benefits of natural light, fresh air and, if you're luck, an inspiring view!

In Feng Shui, the recommended positions for a home office are in the east, south-east, south and north-east of the home. The desk position in the room supports different purposes too, facing west immerses us in chi energy relating to income and contentment; facing east promotes the energy of ambition to start and complete projects. To find out more, visit Simon Brown's website, http://www.chienergy.co.uk/fengshuibusinesssuccess.htm

Furniture

Having established the best position, the next task is suitable furniture. Some home workers have mini-offices in more than one room: a desk in the bedroom and a laptop on the bed, a second desk with a PC on it in the living room and an art space in the spare bedroom for creative projects. In any case, allow room for visitor seating and all the basic electrical equipment. The latter should preferably be as far away from you as possible to minimise the effects of electrical radiation - peace lillies are great for absorbing this.

Desk material should be considered too. Smaller spaces will benefit from the light visual "weight" of pale or transparent materials like acrylic, which appear to take up less space. This desk comes from Space Acrylic based in Exeter. They design and supply a wide range of acrylic furniture, from dining tables to lamp shades. As for seating, the essentials are getting the right colour and comfort level. Choose a colour that you love and build your colour scheme around it. Commercial suppliers will have a range of fabrics and shades to choose from and most will allow you to borrow a couple of chairs to test drive - it's always worth investing in as much comfort as you can afford.

Storage

Think vertically about storage to maximise your floor area. With shelving, always have the biggest items and wider shelves nearest the floor, and the smallest items on narrower shelves nearest the ceiling. The tapering effect will cancel any tendency for the shelves to loom.

If you're on a budget, visit www.green-works.co.uk. The charity remodels old school and office furniture - I particularly like their cubes that lock together to make storage walls. For instant bookends, place together pieces of varying heights. This will add interest to the room and break up the volumes of the furniture, so is good in small rooms. Clear plastic chests of drawers are great for office use - they're space and time efficient as you can see quickly see what's inside. Being light, they easily stack on top of sturdier items too.

Inspiration

Leave space on your walls to mount favourite images that encourage day dreaming during your breaks. Pictures with distant horizons work best for this. Research shows that clients value seeing the qualifications of those they engage so frame these and place them prominently to inspire both you and them. Make sure that the wall you spend most time facing is a colour conducive to your work, turquoise or lavendar for tranquility, yellow or orange for mental stimulation and creativity. Try having a pair of complementing colours on adjacent walls to give the room lift and interest. After all, one of the huge benefits of working at home is to be in control of your own space!