Distant work. How to organize a home office?

Due to the ongoing pandemic, remote work has become a very popular model in many organizations. No matter how much time you spend in your home office, it should be well equipped and tailored to your individual needs. We have prepared for you some practical tips for decorating your home office and a list of necessary products. Check out what a home office needs to be comfortable working from home.

Organize your workspace at home

How to make remote work convenient and efficient? The first step to success is to properly prepare the place where we will do this work. Consider how to equip your home office so that all the most important equipment is at hand and at the same time feels comfortable in it. Let's answer the question: “What items do we most often use in a stationary office?” and “under what conditions is it best for us to focus?” With this knowledge, it will be much easier for us to organize the workspace: choose the necessary office furniture and get ready to work from home.

This countertop is half the world! How to choose a desk for working at home?

The basic decor element of any home office (regardless of its size) is, of course, a desk. The best home office desk is the one that fits all the essentials on the table top without taking up too much space in the room.

Corner models usually occupy a small area and have additional shelves on which you can put small equipment or documents. However, minimalists can put their business computer on a simple table that consists of only a tabletop and legs. However, if the need or desire to fit a lot of equipment on a computer desk goes hand in hand with plenty of space in a home office, consider a wide, solid tabletop supported by large cabinets on either side. and matches other office furniture from the same collection. An interesting solution is also a desk with a height and tilt adjustment function - this is a very convenient piece of furniture that will work well not only when working on a drawing, but also allows you to change the position from sitting to standing, i.e. temporarily unload the spine.

What is the best office chair?

Working from home means the same number of hours of sitting as in the office. The best solution in the case of long-term remote work is to purchase a swivel chair equipped with a headrest and armrests. A comfortable office chair will provide us with comfort and will not cause back or shoulder pain. It is also important what features our dream office chair should have. The most important of them are:

• the ability to adjust the height of the chair and armrests,
• adjustable seat depth,
• the ability to adjust the angle of the backrest and headrest,
• an efficient chassis system that will allow you to move freely in a seated position,
• the possibility of free swinging while sitting,
• options for blocking each movement of the chair.

What computer equipment would be useful in a home office?

A home office is not much different from the one in which you work permanently. Or at least it shouldn't be otherwise, especially when it comes to hardware. So what not to miss when working from home? Of course, all basic electronic equipment such as:

• laptop or desktop computer
• printer/scanner,
• webcam,
• headphones with a microphone (especially if you often participate in teleconferencing),
• bluetooth speakers,
• WiFi router or network signal booster - these items on the list are especially important because most business tasks are now performed over the Internet.

It is worth remembering that the computer that we will use for remote work does not have to have very high parameters. Regardless of whether we prefer to work on a laptop or prefer desktop computers, we will focus only on those device functions that are necessary for our daily work. In most cases, for business computers, it is enough that the equipment is equipped with MS Office, which allows you to freely create and open files, as well as support basic applications. If our choice is a PC, then when searching for a suitable model, you should pay attention to the following parameters:

• SSD hard drive - 512 GB enough for everyday tasks,
• 8 GB of RAM is the optimal amount that will allow you to smoothly use and switch between applications,
• processor - enough hardware from the INTEL Core i5 or Ryzen 5 series, multi-core devices are usually used by graphic designers or editors,
• graphics card - as long as we're not doing game design or photo processing, a card like the GIGABYTE GeForce GT 710, nVidia GeForce GTX 1030, or GIGABYTE Radeon RX 550 GV is enough.

If you're planning to buy a larger monitor, make sure it has room-adjustment features and an HDMI input that matches your work computer model. Monitors with a matte TN panel and 60Hz refresh rate work well in office work. We can also choose the right screen aspect ratio depending on what duties we perform on a daily basis:

• A 16:9 screen is a standard size, so a monitor with this aspect ratio is the most common equipment,
• The 21:9 screen, also known as widescreen, confuses the display of two full-sized browser windows without the need for a second monitor. This means the same space to work with, but half as many cables.
• 16:10 screen - I recommend this type of monitor to graphic designers, designers or IT people. Why? Because the vertically enlarged screen allows you to view the project almost from top to bottom.

When choosing a laptop, do not forget to choose a screen resolution that will allow us to freely work with the necessary applications and watch in Full HD quality. The minimum width is 15,6 inches, and when it comes to the upper limit, it's worth considering if we'll be traveling with this computer a lot. If so, it might be better not to choose the largest one. RAM in a mid-range laptop is usually 4 GB, but you should think about increasing this parameter to 8 GB. 

Little Gadgets That Make Working From Home Easier

Organizing a home space for remote work is not only about buying office furniture or choosing the right computer equipment. First of all, it is the creation of an atmosphere of work and concentration. To achieve this, you also need to think about the less obvious aspects of working in a home office. If we have a habit of writing down various pieces of information and we like being able to go back to those notes, consider buying a whiteboard and hang it in a prominent place.

If, on the other hand, we want to keep our home office organized and easily separate business documents from personal ones, a desktop organizer will come in handy.

Another thing ... coffee! Drinking morning coffee in the company of a colleague is almost a ritual in an office setting. A day started in this way is a guarantee of productivity. Working remotely, we can't enjoy the presence of familiar faces, but we can compete for delicious coffee. Let's look for a filter coffee maker that will provide us with an abundance of brewed, aromatic coffee. You can read more about all types of coffee machines in our article “Pressure, overflow, capsule?” Which coffee machine is best for you?

The lamp also plays an important role on the table. The use of a point light source when working at home and in the office has a good effect on our vision and eye health. In poorly lit rooms, our optic nerve has a difficult task, and its constant stress can lead to poor vision. Therefore, when looking for a table lamp, one should be guided not only by aesthetic considerations, but also by practical issues. How to choose the best table lamp? Let's make sure the color of the light from our new lamp is neither too white nor too yellow - the best will be between 3000K and 4000K. It's also important to be able to move the lamp freely - so it can't get hot and be very heavy. Adjustable height will also be a big advantage.

You already know how to equip your home office so that working "remotely" is easy and convenient. If you are looking for a way to organize a student's room in this way, see the article "How to organize study at home?"