*Conquering Your Space

Conquering Your Space:
Stellar Home Office Furnishings Fuse Practicality and Pizzazz

By Suzanne Martin

So much work, so little space. Chances are your home office overflows with a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture accompanied by an inefficient scattering of high-tech equipment. Power cords snake across the floor while paper piles up on every unoccupied surface. What should be a refuge for work, a place of productivity, more likely resembles an out-of-control storage room. Time for a change.

Today’s home office furnishings cater to contemporary needs: efficient equipment placement, ample storage space, ergonomic seating and clean work surfaces. Modular designs configure to fit any shape or size of space. They combine function with fashion and generate creativity instead of clutter. They also take into account sleeker budgets. Nowadays, you can furnish a home office for about $3,000, nearly a 40 percent decrease in price from 1990.

So inspire your entrepreneurial spirit and jazz up your work space with some of the latest designs in home office furnishings. After all, you work hard and you deserve a room with a view.

Desk Mates
Two words best describe the new trend in home office furnishings: modular and mobile. With modular systems, you buy just the pieces you need, then add to them as your business grows, your needs change or your budget allows. If your office is tucked into a snug corner of a living room, choose the pieces that fit the space. If you’re lucky enough to work in a room the size of Texas, fill it with the entire furniture collection. The C2 Modular Home Office from Sligh Furniture Co. in Holland, Mich., for instance, delivers a whopping 19 different components that you mix and match to fit any size or eclectic shape of office. As Jeff Pulver, manager of product development at Sligh, says, “Furniture should accommodate the room -- not the other way around.”

Many modular systems sprouted wheels during the past year, making it easy to rearrange your office on a whim. At Haworth Inc. in Holland, Mich., nearly two-thirds of its furniture lines now sport wheels, and sales of the company’s mobile products are stronger than ever.

The appeal of modular and mobile furniture goes beyond ease of configuration. Flexibility also gives owners a feeling of empowerment over their work space. “Mobile and adaptable work environments provide people with a stronger sense of personal control, which improves psychological health and, ultimately, performance,” says Dr. Jay Brand, organizational behaviorist and psychologist at Haworth.

The modular explosion encompasses a variety of styles. Ultra-sleek, casual, traditional, even antique designs make appearances in home offices. Haworth definitely shattered the institutional look with the concept prototype Eddy, a futuristic, arena-like, tiered work space. Bush Furniture’s avant-garde Milano Office Collection defies pigeonholing with its satin-finish tubular steel frames and jade green work surfaces.

The Milano collection reflects the building boom in home office furnishings. It’s RTA, ready-to-assemble. RTA furniture grabs about 75 percent of the home office market. And with good reason -- the price is right. You purchase the furniture kit, then lend sweat equity by assembling pre-cut pieces. Most manufacturers have refined the assembly process so that even mechanically-challenged folks can succeed in building their own furniture. For those who would rather fork over money than time, many office furniture stores offer assembly for an extra fee.

Stow It
The sheer variety and volume of materials that accumulate in home offices can make grown business owners cry. Furniture manufacturers are responding to pleas of “more storage space” by offering drawers, cabinets, shelving, cubby holes, even portable file tubs in their modular office lines. At Haworth, production of lateral file cabinets, mobile pedestals, overhead bins and bookshelves is up, proving that the way we deal with paper is simple: We file it. “The paperless office seems to have run smack-dab into something even bigger -- the Information Age,” says Kurt Vander Schurr, a product manager at Haworth.

If you want a more efficient work space, heed the trend to increase storage capacity in your home office. Incorporate shelving that makes the most of vertical space. Stacking bookshelves and hanging wall organizers can vanquish clutter from your desk. Junk the standard four-drawer file cabinet in favor of mobile lateral files that do double duty. In modular office systems, the height of lateral files often matches the height of desks. By fitting the file next to your desk, you gain valuable work surface. Some mobile files are designed to slip under the unused area beneath your desk.

For bulky items like paper supplies and binders, try tall shelved cabinets with doors. Why? Because clutter that is out of sight is also out of mind.

Take A Seat
Ergonomics and comfort define the new breed of office chairs. That makes sense because in an office setting, 80 to 90 percent of all work is done from a seated position. Unfortunately, our bodies weren’t created to sit for long periods of time. So choosing the right chair to complement your new office look becomes one of your most important tasks. When the editors of Home Office Computing magazine tested eight ergonomic chairs, they chose the Parachute by Knoll as the winner. Clean design, a comfortable seat and an appealing price of $325 put the Parachute in first place. But not all body types and posteriors judge comfort the same. Before you spring big bucks for the perfect chair, take a seat and see how it fits. Be sure to choose a chair with ample adjustments to the seat, backrest and armrests. The more adjustments the chair can make to fit your body, the better. And if the chair doesn’t roll, don’t buy it.

Having said all that, traditional chairs may soon see some truly contrasting competition. Haworth and other furniture makers say sitting should be an active, not a passive, endeavor that allows workers to constantly move. Based upon the maxim that “the best posture is the next posture,” Haworth’s research has shown that frequent postural movements produce a number of physical and mental benefits for workers. And the company designed the prototype Pogo to demonstrate the concept. No more than a seat mounted atop a giant spring, the Pogo allows multidirectional motion from a seated position. Will such futuristic designs ever replace our beloved executive chairs? We’ll see, but the Pogo sure looks like fun.

All Lit Up
Concerns for energy consumption, ergonomics and productivity lead the way when it comes to new products that light up home offices. But aesthetics still count, and manufacturers offer an array of lamps and lights to blend with new furniture styles.

For optimum lighting, your home office needs three types of light: ambient or overhead, natural light from windows, and task light that falls directly on your work surfaces. Together these three sources chase away shadows, prevent eyestrain and create a productive atmosphere.

Natural light does present a problem -- glare. Placing your computer monitor at a 90-degree angle to a window will reduce glare on the monitor screen. Translucent window shades, hot items in home offices today, control glare without disrupting your view.

Along with soaking up some sun, you need to shine light directly on the tasks at hand. Low voltage halogen fixtures aim light exactly where it’s wanted and they save energy. Halogen lamps with swivel arms clamp onto furniture or sit on desktops. Track lights with adjustable halogen fixtures also let you spotlight specific areas.

Finally, don’t forget to give your office a feeling of coziness. Table and floor lamps that shed light in corners create a warm glow that will keep you in the mood for working.

Made-To-Order-Office
Maybe you think you can get more for your money with a custom-designed, custom-built office. You may be right, says NASE Member Doric Caron.

Doric and Kathleen Caron, owners of Organizers LLC in Chantilly, Va., design and install home offices. Doric says his custom offices meet or beat the price of most ready-to-use furniture and offer all the advantages of efficient space organization.

“One customer who shopped office furniture stores priced what he wanted at $5,000 to $6,000,” says Doric. “But the furniture still didn’t quite fit his space. We did his office for $2,500 and fit the system exactly the way he wanted it.

“We look at a client’s working habits, like whether they’re left handed or right handed. We maximize vertical space. We use lots of small cubby holes for organizing. Most people have small quantities of a lot of little things, like CD-ROMs and envelopes. We get all of that clutter off the desk.”

The Carons measure each client’s space and determine how an office can be arranged to increase comfort and productivity. With measurements in hand at the site, the Carons produce a detailed design drawing of the office arrangement and let customers choose the colors and materials they want. The Carons use the same furniture-quality materials found in most ready-to-assemble office systems -- durable melamine and laminates in a variety of the latest colors and natural wood grains. Once the order is placed, it takes about three weeks to get materials and install the office, says Doric.

Along with an exact fit in the available space, the Caron’s clients get extra touches. Custom-built work surfaces can be constructed to height specifications, making desks and computer areas ergonomically correct for each individual user. “To get the same office from a custom cabinetmaker could easily cost $7,000 to $8,000. We do it for less than $3,000,” says Doric.