How to set up a workspace at home

Choosing a spot: a corner is fine, as long as it is fixed

A separate study is lovely but not essential; what matters is consistency. Working in a different corner every day renews the set-up burden each morning and prevents the mind from forming the association ‘this is the workplace’. A corner of the living room, a small desk in the bedroom, even a wide hallway will do the job as long as it stays the same.

Look at three things when choosing: which part of the home stays quietest during the day, where the natural light comes from, and what appears behind you on video calls. Avoid working face to face with the bed if you can; it harms both focus and the associations of sleep.

The basic set-up: chair, desk, screen

Correct adjustment comes before expensive equipment. The order is: the chair first (feet flat on the floor, elbows at roughly a right angle and level with the desk), then the screen (top edge at eye level, about an arm's length away). If you work on a laptop, a riser plus an external keyboard is the highest-return small investment in a home office; the details are in the monitor height guide.

If you have to work on a kitchen chair, even a small cushion for lumbar support and a folded blanket for seat height make a difference. Do not wait for perfection; the best arrangement you can build with what you already own is worth more than an ideal one you never build.

Two small details also affect comfort: if your feet do not reach the floor properly, a footrest (a thick book will do) eases circulation in the legs; and keeping your wrists from resting against and bending over the desk edge while typing reduces hand fatigue. None of these adjustments costs anything; they simply wait to be noticed once.

Light and sound: invisible comfort

Two principles are enough for light: the working surface should be bright enough, and the light source should not compete with the screen. A window directly behind you creates reflections on the screen; directly in front of you it creates glare in the eyes; sitting side-on to the window is the most comfortable position in most cases. For evening work, do not rely on the ceiling light alone — give a desk lamp a place too.

On sound, keep expectations realistic: a home will not be a silent studio. A combination of headphones, an agreement with the household about certain hours and, where needed, background sound (quiet music, ambient noise) is a sufficient solution in most homes.

Boundaries: time as much as space

The real difficulty of working from home lies not at the desk but at the boundaries. The spatial boundary is relatively easy: the working corner belongs to work, the sofa and the dining table do not. The boundary in time demands more discipline: a definite start and finish time, a lunch break genuinely taken, and work notifications silenced in the evening. For the notification side, the guide to reducing notifications has concrete steps.

Talk about the boundary with the household too: a simple signal such as ‘if I'm at the desk, I'm working’ sets expectations even in homes with small children. Setting a boundary is not selfish; it protects the quality of both the work and the home.

The lunch break is part of that boundary as well: lunch eaten at the desk effectively abolishes the break. Eating in another room, or combining the meal with a short trip outside where possible, puts a genuine pause in the day; the afternoon's attention feeds on that pause.

An end-of-day ritual, and movement

The journey home from the office was a transition ritual without anyone noticing; when you work from home, that transition has to be built deliberately. A simple closing sequence is enough: note tomorrow's three tasks, tidy the desk, shut down the computer and, if possible, go for a short walk; this ‘artificial commute’ tells the mind the day is over.

And do not overlook the fact of movement: working from home also removes the natural activity the commute used to provide. Adding deliberate breaks and small opportunities for movement through the day closes that gap; for methods, see the movement breaks and daily movement opportunities guides.

Frequently asked questions

This guide draws on the remote working recommendations of occupational health bodies and on widely accepted principles in the field of ergonomics.