How Can Your Home Office Stay Bright And Cheerful All Year?

Having a home office can be very convenient for remote or hybrid working, as you have a base where you can keep everything you need to do the job. However, when it comes to the design, configuration and decor, it needs to be set up to deal with changing seasonal factors.

Anyone who has worked in multiple offices will be aware that some can be rather better than others at certain times of the year. There will be those that are too hot in summer, while others will suffer from the glare of the sun when it gets lower in the sky.

On the other hand, there are places that become very gloomy and full of shadows when the natural light levels are low, making them depressing and unpleasant places to work in during the winter months.

A company office may be a custom-designed building or a place that had a different use but has since been adapted, like a former warehouse. When it comes to your home, however, you have both choices and constraints.

• You can pick which bedroom to use as an office.
• You could make significant structural changes like building an extension, but this is very expensive.
• Factors such as access to natural light can vary depending on which way the window faces and local factors such as topography and the position of nearby buildings.

Ideally, it makes sense to choose a room that does get a lot of natural light, the primary benefit being that you can keep your energy bills down as you will not need to use as much artificial lighting.

How Can A Bespoke Desk Make The Most Of Natural Light?

When we provide bespoke office desks for home workers, we work with householders to design them to take into account a wide array of factors.

Some of these are connected with the efficient use of space, the need to store equipment or files, as well as your choices of décor and style. But it also makes sense to design and configure them in a way that enables you to get the benefits of natural light as you sit.

The most obvious step to take is to have the desk designed and positioned so it is close to the window, ideally in a south-facing room that gets the best of the sun all year round.

Moreover, you should be sitting side-on to the window. This prevents you from having to deal with the sun in your eyes if you face towards it, or the glare reflecting off your screen if you have your back to it.

Not only will this give you the benefit of lots of natural light, but it might also provide you with some pleasant views, assuming the vista outside is of something pleasant such as the garden or nearby hills (we can’t really help if you live next to the glue factory).

How Does Natural Light Boost Your Mood?

Lots of light will also help to lift your mood, which can be good at any time of the year, but is particularly significant when light is in fairly short supply.

For some people, this is a serious concern, with Seasonal Affective Disorder causing some people to feel very low, tired and demotivated during the winter months.  Even for those without this condition, however, it is likely that more sunlight will equal a better mood.

However, you could end up with some problems if you simply push a desk as close to the window as possible and suffer inconvenience as a result, such as being at the opposite end of the room from all the files or equipment you need.

This is where bespoke design can be so useful, by ensuring the structure can be shaped to fit in the part of the room nearest the window while having attached shelving or drawers so that everything is close at hand.

What Colours Are Best For A Sunlight Home Office?

The design of the desk also needs to complement the wider décor and design of the room, including the colours and the spacing of other items within it.

Several appropriate colours could help to provide the right balance when a lot of light is pouring into the room:

• Green can provide a very natural look
• Yellow can prove especially bright and joyful
• White is highly reflective
• Pink can accentuate the light
• Blue may soften the light slightly
• Neutrals such as peach and beige can bring balance

This may apply primarily to the colours that the walls are painted, but also the other fixtures, fittings and furnishings, although these will mostly be smaller and therefore less impactful. What is also worth considering is that the colours must help to balance the room in all circumstances, from a bright sunny day to one in midwinter, when it is dark by four in the afternoon.

How Can You Ensure The Right Level of Home Office Lighting At All Times?

Part of the solution for the latter, of course, is to have good lighting built into your office. Maximising daylight means you don’t have to use it at all on many days (unless you are working very late), but there will be times when it is necessary.

Of course, you may have a good overhead light in the middle of the room, but this may not be ideally situated if the room is quite large and you are near the window, while there may not be any convenient places to put a table lamp, due to the space these can take up.

A very elegant solution could be to have lights attached to the desk itself. For example, if you have shelves that stack up above the desk, embedding some lights in these to provide illumination may prove very effective.

Ideally, lights should be adjustable, as the brightness level you need on a gloomy December lunchtime will be less than you need at nine in the morning or will need at the back end of the day. 

Finally, you should always have some means of adding shade, such as blinds or curtains, to ensure that when it is very sunny, the glare is not too dazzling.

With the right bespoke design and careful planning, you can create an office that stays more than bright enough to do your job all year round and is never a place of gloom and shadows.