Creating Your Home Office Plan

Evaluate Your Home Office Needs

The first step in creating a home office plan that works is to evaluate what you plan to do in the space.

Say, for example, your work requires you to prepare client packages or corporate gift baskets. First, think about how you work. Break down your work day into the individual tasks you do and the spaces in which you do them. Each one of these spaces will be known as a work zone.

Your home office work may be at a computer on a desk with a stack of CDs and reference materials close at hand. This is Zone 1.

Assembling package materials or collating information packets requires horizontal layout space. Necessary inventory items and business samples can be kept in nearby bins. This is Zone 2.

Your work may have you meet with clients in your home office. That meeting space, with its couch, two comfortable chairs, a table and floor lamps, is Zone 3. You may find you have other zones. Detail each one and prioritize it according to how necessary it is to the work you must accomplish.

Thoroughly and honestly evaluate your work. As Frank Isaacson, architect and owner of Techline in Appleton, WI, an independent studio providing commercial and professional home office solutions, says: “Being honest with your space needs can even take in how many dogs you have. In other words, it’s all very personal.” Will you need a zone for the kids to use? A zone for reading and review? It all depends on what’s going to go on in your office.

Do the Math

Now take out your tape measure, pencil, and paper and get to work. Measure the length, width, and height of the equipment and furniture in each of your work zones, including tables and floor lamps, the stereo, and TV, if you use them in your home office. Write down the access space needed for your printer and your scanner. Getting the numbers on paper now will add to the success of your home office design project.

In your layout and collating space, take the time to lay out sample materials and place them as you would when you work on them. Actually place those 8-1/2x11 sheets of paper, those rolls of colorful wrapping cellophane, whatever you use, exactly as you would in a real work situation. Then measure how much room those materials take.

When you’ve got all your numbers together, it’s time to add — zone by zone. Zone 1 might need 12 square feet for a desk, 4 square feet for a chair, 3 square feet for a file cabinet, and 1.5 square feet for a computer tower. Zone 2 might call for 16 square feet for a table and 2 square feet for bins.

Zone 3, your meeting space, will probably need some additional space included. Besides the couch, chairs, table, and lamps, you will need that comfort factor for potential clients. Call in some friends or family members to act as models and to provide some real distance checks. How far apart should the chairs be? Is there sufficient leg room? You want to build a comfort zone into this area and not have clients literally meeting you nose to nose. Figure in those factors and Zone 3 could have a space need of 48 square feet.

These three hypothetical zones would require an office space of about 57 square feet. In addition, you’ll probably need a bit of leg room to get up and move about.