Versatile Desks Doubly Attractive : The Right Design Can Add Beauty as Well as Function to a Home

Tom Brenneman was browsing through an antique store when a desk in the corner caught his eye. He didn’t know it yet, but he was hooked.

He circled the Italian Art Deco desk, admiring the classic curved lines, the unusual reddish hue and the beauty of the swirling patterns of the walnut burl veneer (cut horizontally from a tree stump). Finally, he decided he had to have it. Brenneman’s wife, Cindy, tried to dissuade him. First of all, this was 1978 and $1,400 seemed a bit pricey. It was too big, and anyway, he already had a desk.

But, he recalls, “I literally couldn’t leave the store.” He told himself, “I gotta do something to tie that desk up so nothing happens to it.”

Today, that one-of-a-kind desk is glossy with years of lovingly applied beeswax polish and is the most prized piece of furniture in the Brennemans’ Costa Mesa home. The two say they will never part with it.

Selecting a desk for the home can be a very personal decision. For some people, a desk is more than just a place to store papers and pencils. They know the right desk can add beauty to their homes and still be functional.

It’s true that some still opt for basic pressed-wood economy models that sell for less than $200. Others, however, prefer to go upscale for just the right desk to complement their home.

For these people, beauty is just as important as function, whether the choice is like the Brennemans’, a sleek contemporary model, a Southwest style or even a custom design.

Martha Martin chose a natural pine desk with a Mexican motif to blend in with the comfortable ranch-style interior of her newly remodeled Cowan Heights home. The $1,500 desk has a light finish that is slightly rough, drawers with iron pulls, hand carving and is topped with a hutch with cubbyholes and drawers.

She placed it in her family room so she could be in the thick of her busy family’s activities when doing Little League paper work or just paying bills.

Designer Mary Swift of Swift Interiors in Laguna Hills had a physician client who needed a desk in a master bedroom, away from his busy family.

The room had a bay window that extended to the floor and left an odd-shaped space that seemed ideal for a desk. Swift suggested a custom design. That resulted in a 9-foot, 3-inch Philippine mahogany desktop attached to the wall on each side, with additional supports underneath and small drawers for pens and pencils. It cost about $1,000.

Work-space environment is an important consideration when selecting a desk and deciding where to put it, Swift says. A work space needs to be “a pleasant place where you don’t mind working,” she says, “a place where people feel comfortable when they go there.” Otherwise, it’s easier to find excuses not to use it.

Mary Anne Emett has just that in a cozy 4-foot by 4-foot office with a desk designed like a drafting table. Emett needed a place where she could comfortably create drawings and paintings as preliminaries for her ceramic sculpture.

During the remodeling of the Emett home on Newport Bay, an alcove was created between two rooms as a result of a wall that had to be left in place for support. The rooms are designed as one large room that can be divided by closing a series of floor-to-ceiling sliding Japanese soji screens.

Emett and her interior designer, John Garcia of PLANit Design Studio in Corona del Mar, decided it would be ideal for a work space. It’s small, but Emett has everything she needs there--desk, phone, books, paper and art materials--within arm’s reach. Yet, she doesn’t feel closed in. On one wall, she can look through soji screens into the den and to the bay beyond. And when guests arrive, she can conceal her work by closing the screens.

Emett’s cabinetmaker created a 3-foot by 4-foot desk that sits 42 inches high and has a top that slants like a drafting table. Because Emett is more than 6 feet, 2 inches tall, she can stand and work or sit on a tall stool.

The desk cost less than $500, Emett said. The top, framed in natural redwood and covered with blue Formica to match the walls in surrounding rooms, is hinged and has storage underneath. It also has drawer storage and a niche that holds large drawing pads and mailing tubes.

Julia Cunningham of Julia Cunningham Interior Design in Seal Beach also had a client with an odd-sized space as the result of a remodel. This area was in front of a window with a bay view, in a family room that featured a custom cherry wood bar with a granite top. The solution: a custom desk to match the bar. It has ample drawer space to accommodate the client’s needs, she says, and cost less than $1,500.

Function, says Cunningham, is still one of the most important considerations when selecting a desk. “What are the needs of the person using the desk?” she asks clients. Many people today need space for peripherals such as computers, keyboards and screens, printers and fax machines. And many times, she says, people opt for something utilitarian, rather than something pretty.

Sometimes, however, even a pretty desk can have unexpected versatility.

Carmen Olssen, an Irvine interior designer, had a client who wanted to put his large contemporary desk in the dining room of his new high-rise condominium. The desk was in an adjacent room sometimes inundated with outside noises, and besides, the dining room had a view.

As a solution, Olssen designed a room that is an office by day and a dining room at night by adding multipurpose black leather chairs on casters, hidden storage space for office materials and adjustable lighting.

The glass and chrome desk, which Olssen estimates cost between $7,000 and $10,000, has two semicircle end pieces that can extend the three-foot-wide desk from a length of six feet to nine feet. The top of the main body of the desk is a heavy piece of smoked gray glass on top of a chrome crossbar/pedestal.

When it’s time to dine, the man simply unplugs his phone and puts it away and hides any paper work in a credenza and a cabinet underneath a planter. Extended, the desk will comfortably seat eight for dinner. And, says Olssen, no one would ever suspect it’s a desk.

Cindy Brenneman says her home office has it all--beauty, function and the perfect environment. She uses the desk most now, for her work as an artist and photographers’ representative. She finds the desk very functional, with plenty of work space and drawers that go the full depth of the desk. There’s even a storage space for portfolios.

In addition to the desk, which is 3 feet by 6 feet, the 11-foot by 13-foot room contains two matching library cases, the largest measuring 8 feet by 7 feet. All three pieces are works of art with hand carving and appealing curved lines. The matching cases hadn’t arrived yet at Steven-Thomas Antiques in Santa Ana when the Brennemans’ bought the desk, but they purchased them later for $1,800.

Surprisingly, the office does not look cramped in spite of the massive pieces--somehow it all works because of the beauty of the furniture. This is not always the case however.

Jim McClure, owner of Orange County Office Furniture in Santa Ana, remembers a customer who bought a large desk and a matching credenza topped by a hutch. When the furniture was set up in his home, the man’s wife had a fit because she said it overpowered the room. She made him return it.

That’s why McClure urges customers to block out the space a desk and other furniture will occupy before going shopping.

McClure also stresses that it’s important to measure doorways and hallways to see if a desk can be maneuvered into its appointed room. He recalls one customer who was irate when his new desk wouldn’t go through the narrow door of his home office, a converted garage. Then he sheepishly apologized when he remembered that his current desk was put in place before the final wall and doorway were installed.