There’s no space like home
In olden days, there was The Study.
The word conjures images of a stately and serene refuge lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and dark leathery tomes, a globe and other trappings of the contemplative life.
Of course, that was before e-mail, fax machines, telecommuting and downsizing cast a generation of workers out of their skyscrapers and sent them home to earn their livelihood.
With that ongoing migration is coming sharply increasing numbers of people who need a place at home to do their work--and a generalized scramble by office furniture firms to sell them the desks, chairs, file cabinets and other necessities.
The major suppliers of office furniture, the companies that have made their fortunes on the foundations of heavy-duty corporate fixtures, are only just beginning to understand the requirements of these small and home offices.
Meanwhile, office and furniture superstores are rushing to capture the market with lower-cost modular units of melamine-surfaced particleboard, but they are only partially successful in satisfying the needs of the modern, high-tech home worker.
Thus, the home office market is a major growth industry for custom furniture makers--and for the interior designers and others who understand what it takes to put together an office that will accommodate the computers and other electronic equipment that increasingly dominate work spaces of all kinds.
“It’s definitely one of the hottest areas of design right now,” says Sybil Roth, an interior designer with Closet Factory, a maker of modular furniture for offices and storage. “All of the major office furniture firms are scrambling to get in on the home office area, but most of them haven’t got a clue what’s needed.”
These days, some sort of designated work space is becoming a staple of the average home, says Liz Steward, a West Los Angeles real estate developer and interior designer. Sometimes the offices are an adjunct to a primary corporate workplace or a place to tend personal finances and letter writing, but increasingly they’re headquarters for self-employed professionals.
“It’s a virtual world we live in now,” notes Joe Ruggiero, design director and executive producer of two home design programs for the Home & Garden Television network. “You can make your office anywhere.”
But most of the people involved in shifting workloads home have never had to think about designing an office. At its best, home office design is more than a question of matching the rug to the curtains. It’s a study of workplace efficiency, productivity, even physical and mental well-being, all factors critical to the people creating a space in which to spend eight, 10 or 12 hours a day.
“You’ve got to find products that interact with you, not the other way around,” says Don Dotter, who runs the Healthy Home Office, a Marina del Rey workplace design firm that emphasizes ergonomics--design that’s both functional and healthful.
“A lot of people start off working on nonfunctional furniture in their home offices,” Dotter says. “They’ll stick the computer here and the printer there, and they’ll make do with a hodgepodge of stuff for months or years before their backs start to hurt or they get carpal tunnel pain.”
Home offices not only have to work, they have to look good. Whether a particular taste runs to industrial chic, French provincial, comfy Californian or high-tech spartan, one of the primary aesthetic directives in the home office market is the development of furniture that’s functional yet blends with the homelike surroundings. The hulking steel-and-veneer desk that looks good in an office building would probably be out of place in the average home.
“We know that most people don’t have a separate room, and we really try to take care of them,” says Pamela Diaconis, a spokeswoman for furniture retailing giant Ikea. “A lot of people want to be able to hide their office when they’re not working.”
“More and more people are saying they want their home office to be a place that feels good to be in,” adds Patricia Hewitt, owner of Carlyle, a Santa Monica furnishings design showroom. “They don’t want a cold, corporate look.”
And though hiring a professional designer might seem extravagant, it’s not necessarily as expensive as it sounds: Hewitt has designed offices on budgets as low as $1,000, and also as high as $25,000.
Jeffrey Marks, a designer and interior decorator whose main office is in Del Mar in San Diego County, conducts a significant portion of his design business in Los Angeles. He hired himself when he needed to design a local place to receive mail and phone calls and, occasionally, to sleep. A friend offered him the use of a nook in her West Los Angeles apartment--but on the condition that his office not look like an office and that it blend unobtrusively into the surroundings. Marks found an antique desk at a Venice shop and had a daybed made with upholstery to match the colors of the apartment. “The point of it is that you can look at it and you wouldn’t know it’s an office,” Marks says.
So important has the home workplace become in home architecture circles that even the Pacific Design Center, the West Hollywood gallery of haute decor, has pushed into the area. Designer Ruggiero, who has been installing avant-garde “Idea Houses” in design center showrooms around the country, included a home office in his current installation.
It may be the Valhalla of home offices. The Idea House is the fictional home of an imaginary Los Angeles family: a screenwriter and her producer husband, both of whom work at home. Integral to the Idea House office is the electronic media installed by media designer Jon Edwards. The office is wired for video-teleconferencing and online film editing, the same technology that Steven Spielberg used to edit “Jurassic Park” while on location in Europe shooting “Schindler’s List.”
The demands of electronic equipment, especially computers, have a lot to do with the way modern home offices are designed. Lawrence Meyers, a film and TV writer, decided it was time to improve his working environment when he started to notice increasing fatigue and pain in his hands and wrists. He also needed more usable work space.
“I went out to all these office furniture stores, everything from low- to high-priced places,” Meyers recalls. “There were a lot of nice setups, but none that met my specific needs.”
That’s when Meyers brought in Dotter of the Healthy Home Office. She was able to show Meyers where to spend and where to economize. Using solid hardwood for the desk turned out to be prohibitively expensive, for example, so they settled on high-grade particle board with a mahogany laminate surface.
The personal computer has been an evolutionary force in desk design, leading to an overall increase in desktop front-to-back depth and a decrease in height. Even such quotidian concerns as keeping the computer cables out of sight have prompted desk makers to drill holes and create covered cable pathways.
(Many of the traditional office furniture dimensions were determined by the government during World War II, when the American National Standards Institute--known to computer users as ANSI--issued guidelines for manufacturers of products for the armed forces. Obviously, the use of desktop computers was not a design element during the war, and ANSI is following the furniture industry in revising its assumptions for standard office furniture dimensions.)
Older desks usually have narrower surfaces designed for writing longhand and can become cramped once the PC lands. Consider the dimensions: Most PC monitors are about 15 inches deep, front to back. Set a keyboard in front the monitor (another 7 or 8 inches) and there’s barely room to lay down a pen. That’s why most desk makers suggest depths of at least 30 inches if you plan to compute.
Computer-friendly desks also tend to be lower. According to Dotter, recent data recommend computer keyboard heights of 25 1/2 inches to 27 1/2 inches off the floor. (This is only a guideline; individual body sizes and chair height adjustments can affect optimal height.) Perhaps more critical is the orientation of keyboarder to keyboard. For most people, the least stressful typing position has the forearms parallel to the floor, with a 90 degree angle at the elbow.
For many home office workers, the solution is simply the purchase of a computer table, often a multilevel station with a sliding keyboard tray and shelves for the computer, monitor and printer.
If the cost of all this elaborate designing induces a grimace, our friends at the Internal Revenue Service offer some comfort. Office furniture and equipment costs can be written off over five to seven years, or taken as a one-time expense, says Bruce Drooks, a Brentwood tax consultant. The tax savings on a $1,000 desk, for example, could be anywhere from $330 to $550, depending on the tax bracket.
Don’t get cavalier with tax deductions, though; not every home office or piece of equipment in it is eligible, and making even slightly ersatz claims in home office expenses can increase your odds of being audited.
Freelance writer Paul Karon can be reached via e-mail at pkaron@netcom.com
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The Ultimate Office
Television and film writer Lawrence Meyers hired home office designer and ergonomics expert Don Dotter to help him create his ultimate workplace. The heart of the office is the desk installation that Dotter designed.
DESK
Custom-designed, L-shaped desk. Corner piece eliminates the 90-degree angle, enables efficient use of desktop space. Absence of support legs along the front edge allows Meyers to move freely and sit at any point along the desk without knees or chair pedestal bumping. Grommet holes drilled through desk allow management of computer cables. Bookshelves within easy reach.
KEYBOARD SHELF
Movable articulated keyboard shelf attached to bottom of desk swings out, swivels and tilts to desired height and angle.
COPY HOLDER
Copy holder situated between keyboard and monitor holds scripts or other printed material. Allows Meyers to refer to the hard copy while typing while keeping a neutral head position, reducing strain on neck muscles.
CHAIR
Ergonomic desk chair with contoured seat and adjustable lumbar pump and height hold Meyers snugly in optimal sitting posture. (Meyers opted for a seat with a high back and headrest, though designer Dotter recommended a shoulder-height chair back. Meyers now wishes he had listened.)
PRINTER
Cabinets for computer printer and paper storage. Shelves slide out.
FILES
Fixed file cabinets on left side of desk.
COST
Total cost, about $4,000, including delivery, designer’s fee, installation.
