Use Barndoor Hardware to Hide A Pocket Home Office - Courtesy of Sunset Magazine

A home office is almost a requirement today.  As with all design projects, start with objectives and needs.  Too often, homeowners jump to thinking through available space.  When you start with the solution instead of defining the goal, you can miss important opportunities.  Write down the answers to the following questions: 

1. Is this your primary work space or secondary?
2. How often will you use your office (all day, a few hours a day, a few hours a week?)
3. Will you have clients visit?
4. Do you need visual or acoustic privacy from other members of your household?
5. What equipment do you need?
6. How much storage do you need and does all it need to be proximate? 

Then answer some questions about your work habits:

1. Do you need everything at your fingertips?
2. Do you want to be able to hide everything away either so you can put work out of your mind or to hide it from visitors?
3. Do you need distraction or need to block it?
4. Do you need a certain aesthetic environment to work?
5. What do you need to feel connected to … (the family, the garden, your colleagues …)?  
6. Do you need to multi-task while working?  And if so, what other tasks do you handle at the same time – maybe child care or cooking?

The answers to both sets of questions will help you figure out where in your home you should locate your home office.  Don’t rule anything out.  Thinking through your objectives can also help you see you way clear to realizing that space you originally thought was unavailable can be made available. 

For example, if you need to meet with clients, you’ll absolutely need to find space near an outside door so your clients don’t need to traipse through your messy kitchen.  If your “formal” living room is never used, consider using it for your office.  You can separate it from your living space with French doors – either etched or clear – that say this is private.  Putting storage on the walls adjacent to your living space will also provide an acoustic barrier to make meetings with clients private – or to just separate yourself from the family activities.  And when you need connection, open the French doors to invite the family inside.
 

Convert Your Living Room For a Client-Focused Home Office

As another example, if you need to multi-task but also need to create “out of sight / out of mind”, you’ll need a location centrally located but that can be easily closed off – like creating or converting a closet space.  In the image at the top of the article, a project by Greene Partners,  the homeowner uses barndoor hardware to create a large door that will completely conceal the workspace – and the clutter – when not in use.  In another example, below, an office is built-into a modern cabinetry right off the living room.  It’s completely hidden when not in use. 

Built-in Pocket Home Office - courtesy of BHG

 These are but 3 examples of using space in unusual ways to create an effective home-office.   Are you having trouble figuring out how to make a home office work?  Contact me with your problem and I’ll try to help find a solution.  It might become the topic of another article.  Like the recent one on creating privacy for a home office with an arched doorway.

She lives in a largely open plan home with high ceilings and arched doorways.  Her office is right off the foyer and across from the dining room.  The doorway is 48” and the top of the arch is at 95” (see image at bottom of article).

A separate interior doorway with glass doors creates a sense of privacy and seperation

In the solution, rendered above, (as in the previous article) I suggest building a separate doorway inside the office to create an elegant sense of separation that’s badly missing in the existing plan.  See the floor plan, below.  The red/orange walls are the new walls built to give the office a sense of separation and privacy from the rest of the house.  From the image, above, you can see, that when the doors are open, the sense of openness remains.   While, my client will need to re-arrange furniture she will gain a valuable grace and presence. 

Lowering the ceiling in the new alcove and painting the alcove a deep color enhances the sense of separation.  The additional air space and distance decreases the sounds of conversation and increases the sense of privacy.  Using stained glass, does the same while still allowing light to flood into the foyer. 

Floor Plan - Red/orange walls are new

An alternate possibility is to just add a stained glass doorway and arch top window to the existing opening – like in the rendering below.  While it preserves the full space in the office, I don’t think that it creates the same sense of separation and privacy as does the option, above.

Stained Glass Door & Arch Transom Adds Privacy to Arched Doorway

 
Here’s an image taken by my reader of the existing doorway. 

Existing Arched Doorway Into Office

Creating Privacy With Arched Doorway

If she has the space to build a new wall inside her home office, she can create very valuable storage space while also preserving the arch and adding privacy.  In the rendering, above, I added a frosted glass door opposite the arched doorway.  On either side of the new door, I put deep closet that can hide file cabinets and printers and office supplies.  The closets also provide additional sound-proofing and a sense of separation.  By painting the new alcove a deep, saturated color she can enchance the sense that the home office is a different realm from the rest of the house.

Below is the floor plan showing the new wall, new door and new closet space.

Floor Plan to Create Privacy Without Sacrificing the Arched Doorway