Choosing Kitchen Appliances You'll Actually Use

As you design your home remodel, you may want to add a home office nook just off the kitchen or main room. Depending on the type of nook and its size, you will need certain styles of furniture. That doesn't mean you'll need post-modern for one type and federation-style for another. It means you'll need to adjust the size, types, and abilities of each piece to fit the space you have available. That sounds obvious, but it doesn't always work out in real life how it works out in your head when you think that this or that piece of furniture will be just fine. You've got to evaluate how the furniture will affect your time in that office nook and how it will affect anyone trying to walk past the nook.

Define "Nook" First

Before you run out and get furniture, define what your "nook" is really going to be. If you are planning an actual office space that is in a cubby hole or small storage space off to the side of a main room in the home, your furniture can be more traditional – standalone desks, file cabinets, bookcases, and so on. But, if you want more of an informal task center where you can take care of household bills, for example, you won't have a lot of space. You'll have maybe a tabletop and a chair, and your furniture will need to be streamlined and provide you with multiple uses, such as a file cabinet doubling as a printer stand. And, if that task center will be the type hidden behind accordion-fold doors, you will really need to be utilitarian in your choices due to space limitations.

Chairs for All Configurations

The chair will play a huge role in how often you want to be in this space. An uncomfortable chair only encourages you to avoid the desk, as does a chair that is too bulky to hide away, if you have a small nook with a door that now won't be able to close. For task-center nooks, where you have a built-in desk with shelves above, a chair with clean lines and a thin enough back to avoid sticking out into the passageway behind the nook is essential. Admit it: you're not going to want to move another chair over to the nook every day, and then move it back to another spot in the evening; you'll put a chair at the desk and leave it there. So, it needs to be unobtrusive when you're not seated at the desk.

For larger cubby hole office nooks, then you can get the larger, more padded office chairs because you won't have to shove them right up to the desk to move them out of the main path of traffic. Those office nooks are a bit easier to furnish as the larger space allows for more traditional options.

You Need Drawers and File Cabinets

You might be planning only a nook and not a full home office space, but you'll still want drawers and cabinets so you can store items out of your way. The alternative is to have everything piled on the desk and any shelves, leading to a sense of clutter; even neatly stacked and organized folders, for example, can be visually distracting if there are too many of them. A simple two-drawer file cabinet tucked next to the desk may work, or, you can change the simple plank-style table to one with built-in drawers if the nook space is wide enough.

For more information on furniture, contact a professional near you.