Home Offices Deserve Good Design, too!

Home Offices are more important than ever before. Between home-based businesses and telecommuting, nearly 60 million Americans work from home at least part time. With additional office and general computer use apart from work, the need for a functional home office is very evident. However, the reality  is that often home offices are not truly functional, and are very rarely beautiful. Why don't more people believe they should have a space that is functional, comfortable, looks great and inspires them?

House Beautiful Magazine, Designed by Craig Schumacher and Philip Kirk.

Home offices are very under served by Interior Design magazines and books. They are not thought of as one of the beautiful rooms of a home like master suites and formal living rooms. Home offices are functional afterthoughts, hidden away like the garage or laundry room - necessary, but ugly. Many people “make do” with either the location and space or the furniture for their offices, using hand-me-down furniture or spaces that aren’t really comfortable or don’t support the functions to be accomplished.

This seems so counter-intuitive to me when we spend so much time in our home offices. I would venture a guess that the home office logs more hours than all rooms except the bedroom. Of course, if you work from home, the home office may well be the most used room in your house. So you deserve to have function, comfort and beauty. Hence the beginning of a Beautiful Habitat Home Office Series, where I’ll be covering tips and topics to improve your home office with examples from some recent home office makeovers.
 I scoured months worth of multiple home decor magazines to find only a few home office images to share with you to jump start theHome Office Series. I hope you'll fis some inspiration in them for your own functional and beautiful home office space.

 

Luxe Magazine, Winter 2010, Designed by Clodagh Design.

 Luxe Magazine, Winter 2010. Designed by Kevin Spearman, Bellacasa Design Associates, Inc.

 House Beautiful Magazine, designed by J Randall Powers.

Have specific home office questions or issues? Send your questions to me and I'll add them to the list of topics to cover in the series.

Beautiful Habitat: Interior Design & Decoration www.beautifulhabitat.com