Too small for home office?

[Icantbelieveitsnot]

We are looking at ways to practically create a home office space for DH to WFH. It is likely to be full time and with four school aged children we need to make it work for the whole family.

We are considering several ideas (living room, garden office...) but none is ideal long term/ impact on family life/cost etc.

We have extra space on one of our landings which we may be able to use but it would need to be made into an enclosed room to work. The finished 'room' would be about 85cm wide by about 175cm deep. Is this too small or could it work with a clever use of space? (For example We would use a pocket door to make it accessible which could be left open most of the time to make the space seem bigger, wall mount the monitor, have a floating desk and shelves etc).

The room would have a window which would help, I think.

While not ideal I can't decide whether it is too small. Opinions please!

No such thing as too small, if you can fit the the things in that you can require and be able to sit down then it'll be fine. The fact that you've got a window will help it to feel less claustrophobic.

I think it depends how big a desk you need. Mine is 120cm wide / 70cm deep and I'd struggle with anything smaller as I use a widescreen monitor, plus my laptop screen and a mouse and keyboard. If you can work off just the laptop then 80cm is probably fine. I've just measured from the back of my desk to the back of the office chair pushed out and the 175cm is plenty deep enough.

I think that would be fine. I would have a 80cm wide desk which is pretty deep to make up for it being narrow. We have a 90cm desk and it’s fine.

Since working changed we now have MS teams rooms in work which are literally broom cupboard sized (and WERE the broom cupboards) and they're fine if you're not bothered about having your stuff around you to work!

Also - the Ikea pegboard stuff is fab for things like raising up pen pots, little shelves for staplers and the odd stuff you need and having hangers for headphones etc. Can even just mount it to the rear of a desk without needing to wall-drill - it freed up so much surface area on my work desk.

85cm is very narrow - my monitor is 60cm wide, and I have the laptop monitor open next to it. Side by side they are 90cm.

It sounds a bit claustrophobic to me, but if the door is open when DH is working, and there's a window, it might be OK.

Does he have a swivel chair? Just make sure there's room for him to actually get on and off the chair!

Apart from cost OP- why would a garden room not work? Personally I would find what you are proposing claustrophobic- but we are all different - other option is could he work from a coworker space- it's about £220 a month- I do this- depends where you live I guess too- if it's rural probably not feasible

I think that essentially working in a cupboard would be pretty miserable in the long term. Wouldn't it be insanely hot in the summer too? We previously had a garden office and that was brilliant. It doubled up as a space for teenage sleepovers/overflow spare room which was a bonus.

It was also much, much better from a noise pov than working in the house.

Does it absolutely have to be enclosed? I can't picture exactly what you mean, but a landing working space isn't unusual - I know a couple of people with that set up. But obviously if someone else is home all day/the work is confidential etc it might not be practical.

Otherwise, a (slightly) cheaper alternative to a full garden room might be a garden pod like this www.quick-garden.co.uk/camping-pod-brittany-3m-x-4m-10x10-ft-28-mm.html

Obviously you'd need to pay extra to run power out, but it could work (and isn't the 15k+ for a full-sized garden room).