Create A Stylish Home Office, Anywhere

As a writer who covers interior design, I’m often presented with decorating dilemmas. Many of my friends are freelance writers or entrepreneurs who work from home and they often ask me how to create a stylish, yet functional home office.

I tell them, first, stop buying lazy furniture.  What I mean is when space is a premium every piece of furniture needs to perform more than one function.   Whether you telecommute from your basement or run a Fortune 500 company in your studio apartment, with multifunctional furniture, you can work from home in style.

 “I can’t remember the last time someone said they wanted a “home office."  Now, everyone says they “work from home” and want to incorporate those functions into their existing space,” said Eric Kole, interior designer and co-owner of Vastu, a contemporary furniture store in D.C.  

Many of Kole's clients own pricey condos in D.C. and he is the go-to guy for creating stylish small spaces.  Once Kole outfitted a tiny studio apartment in Dupont Circle with a dining table that had to double as a desk.  “There was almost no storage and the only flat service had to function as a desk, dining table, and bedside table! We wore out a couple of tape measures making sure we utilized every last square inch.”

, with a location in Clarendon, carries the versatile Elfa shelving system, which allows you to customize almost any space.  Got a strange nook in a living room? Hang Elfa and it’s an instant office. If your condo has side by side washer and dryer, replace them with a stackable unit.  Hang an Elfa office on the side next to the stackable and when finished working, close the door on your cluttered office.    

Want to have a home office in your bedroom, without your bedroom looking like an office?  Try an armoire.  Forget the massive room-swallowing office armoires of the late 1990s.   New armoires double as vanities and dressers and conceal files, printers and all.  Room&Board’s hand-built Linear collection allows you to select components like drop-down drawers,  pull-out desk tops and file cabinets and have them configured into something that looks like museum quality Arts and Craft furniture. 

If space is tight, dining rooms make excellent offices.  In my Arlington condo, I have a dining room table that I convert into a desk during the day.  It’s one of BoConcept’s Occa series tables.   BoConcept’s Occa series also features a cocktail table with adjustable tops, which can be used for as a desk or dining surface.

“The dining area is one of best spaces to utilize as an office, primarily because the work surface is already there, as is seating,” said Kole. 

 “With the ability to use almost anywhere as a work space, people are more interested in minimizing the visual impact of their technology and just utilizing existing space as comfortably and efficiently as possible without having that space dedicated exclusively as an office, or even to read as 'office' when not in use.”

So toss those lazy pieces, and get some hard-working furniture.  And get to work.