Whether you’re full-time working from home or setting up for weekend gaming sessions, it’s worth it to invest a little extra time to optimise your home office, so you can maximise the daily pleasure you get from a space you’ll spend so much time in!
With nearly 8 years of customising workspaces for Singaporean homes, here are three key details to help you take your home office from a dreary den to a supercharged sanctuary:
(1) Cable Access
Seems obvious - nobody enjoys a cluttered desk, and corralling your wires seems like the first step of table organisation. But here’s one more detail that will take your cable management from meh to flair:
Are you: Team “On-The-Go” OR Team “Stay-Put-Forever”?
Team “On-The-Go” constantly needs to plug and unplug laptop and handphone chargers, and while it may seem like a trivial thing, trust me - having to duck under the table every single day (and probably bumping your head more than once) just to extract your chargers gets old, really fast.
If you need ready, regular access to your chargers, opt for a cable management system that’s easy to reach for, such as a grommet in your table top, so you can easily reach for your plugs all day, any day.
If you’ve got an extensive setup of monitors and CPUs, you’re most likely to be on Team “Stay-Put-In-One-Place”. The good news: even though you’ve probably got more wires to wrangle, you’ve only got to do it once, and you can get it looking sleeker because you don’t need quick access to your plugs.
Our SteelCore cable box is the perfect solution for “stay-put” setups - simply plug your chargers into an extension cord and shove it all in the box, for the cleanest, sleekest aesthetic.
(2) Right Sizing
It’s not just about space - right-sizing your table is key to long-term health! Ensuring that your monitor is the correct distance away mitigates eye strain, and making sure that your table isn’t excessively large helps prevent bruises from walking into corners.
These tips come from (sometimes painful) personal experience:
(i) Do you use a monitor screen? Ensure your desk is at least 60cm deep! 70cm is the ideal depth for a desk (if you have the floor space), as you’ll be able to rest your elbows comfortably while typing, without being too close to the screen.
(ii) Avoid bumping into the corner of your table and stubbing your toe on your chair, by ensuring that you have at least 80cm of space between the edge of your table and the next hard surface (e.g., cabinet, door, wall). This makes using the space much more enjoyable, giving you that much more daily value!
(iii) Are you planning to share your desk with another person? Cater at least 120cm length per person, so you can both enjoy your personal space and privacy. We always recommend getting the maximum length your space can accommodate - trust us, no one ever complained about having “too much space”.
(3) Future Use
Life is all about change. Your shiny new desk today will inevitably experience wear and tear over time. You may need to reorganise your home to accommodate growing children, you might want to shift house altogether, you might not even need a desk someday, even!
This is why we advocate using solid wood slabs - structurally durable and easily adaptable, your solid wood slab furniture can evolve with your lifestyle. Get it refinished so it’s bright and spanking new to match your new home, or repurpose it to benches and shelves to fit your new decor - solid wood gives you that flexibility to reduce waste and enjoy greater lifetime value from the resources we consume.
Want more advice on creating your optimised workspace? Drop by the showroom for a chat with our experienced advisers on weekends,1-6pm (all other days/ timings available by appointment).
Don’t forget to share this with a friend getting started on their renovations!