Do you know how to choose a desk for your home office? You may think you don’t even need a desk because you’ve coped perfectly well until now on the kitchen table.
But all freelancers and small business owners working from home need a desk.
Why?
Having a desk in your home office will make you feel more professional, keep you organised and you’ll be more comfortable. You can pretty much fit a desk and home office into the smallest of rooms. As an added bonus, you get to go desk shopping and all shopping is good.
How To Choose A Desk For Your Home Office?
Type ‘desk’ into any search engine, furniture website, or into that well-known website that used to only sell books but now sells all kinds of plastic tat from China and you’ll be inundated with more desks than you can shake a penis-shaped rocket at.
To make things easier for you, here are a few considerations to help you choose a desk for your home office. 
How Often Will You Use Your Home Office Desk?
If you’re only using your desk occasionally, you probably don’t need to spend too long mulling over your options.
However, if you’re sitting at your desk all day, every day, not only do you need to be comfortable, your desk needs to provide everything you need desk-wise.
If you do sit at a desk all day though, don’t!
Sitting hunched over a desk all day is bad for your back and, although you’ve probably heard of standing desks, you’ve probably also thought standing up all day doesn’t sound like much fun.
Get the best of both worlds with a height adjustable desk. These are desks that are – funnily enough – height adjustable so you can either sit down at your desk or stand up to work to give your back a rest.
If you’re truly hardcore, you can also get a treadmill desk and burn off calories while you’re filling in that spreadsheet, writing that article or thinking up that witty social media update.
Another consideration to make if you’re using your desk all day is, is it near enough power sockets? You may not mind crossing a room to use the printer, charge your phone, etc., if it’s only now and then but you may find it frustrating if you have to do it multiple times a day.
Then again, you might see it as getting your daily steps in and can spend the money you would have spent on a treadmill desk on more stationery instead.
Size:
You may have your heart set on a huge solid oak desk but if your home office is small or the only space available to have a desk without turfing your children out to sleep in the shed is in the gap under the stairs, you’ll have to set your sights a bit lower.
Fear not though! They do wonderful things with desks these days.
If you’re short on floor space, you can get a wall-mounted desk that’s big enough for your laptop and will fold away against the wall when you’re not using it.
If space isn’t an issue though, buy the desk with the biggest workspace your budget allows. Having a lovely big work surface is bliss. Even if you only need a bit of space for your laptop, you’ll have space for plants, stationery and cats.
Storage:
Those minimalist desks are gorgeous, aren’t they? So sleek, streamlined and… impractical.
Sure, they look good and don’t take up much space but there’s barely room for your laptop let alone all the other gubbins your average freelancer needs.
If your current desk/corner of the kitchen table is cluttered with notebooks, pens, files, diaries, books and other items you regularly use, you need storage.
There are desks that come with shelves and drawers built-in, whether that’s upwards or downwards, or you could get a desk big enough for you to choose your own cabinet or shelving unit to slide underneath.
Comfort:
Speaking of underneath the desk, make sure you buy one you can fit your chair comfortably underneath.
When you’re working at home, it’s easy enough to feel that, because you’re working at home and not in a grey characterless office, you don’t need a desk that’s too ‘desky’.
This is fair enough and no one’s suggesting you need to replicate the corporate look in your own home.
But desks are designed for working at, unlike, say, some dining tables that undoubtedly look good but aren’t built with office chairs in mind and have legs or frames in the way.
What we’re saying is – make sure there’s enough legroom. You may not have been able to fly anywhere in the last couple of years thanks to the pandemic but there’s no need to replicate economy class in your home office.
If you’re anything like us, you’ll get through a few desks until you find one perfect for your needs. If you take the advice above though to help you choose a desk for your home office, you can skip the trial and error and spend your working days being productive, comfortable and pain-free.
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