A Bespoke Home Office in Classic Shaker: Hadley Wood
The key to working from home is a space that is genuinely separate from the rest of the house, and good enough to want to sit in. Everyone works differently, so the design has to start from how the person actually uses the room. Once we understood what our Hadley Wood client needed, the brief settled into three things: desk space, storage and shelving. We have been designing and building bespoke furniture since 1999, and a home office is one of the more satisfying rooms to do, because it replaces the kitchen table or the makeshift desk in the spare room with something built for the job.
The Home Office at a Glance
A bespoke home office built into a house in
, in the same
style as the kitchen so the two rooms belong together. A symmetrical desk runs along one wall with cupboards and drawers either side and open shelving above; a full wall of storage faces it. Hand-painted in Little Greene French Grey 113, finished with a solid timber top and Armac Martin hardware. Shutter blinds control the light so it does not fall on the screen. Handmade Kitchen Company design and hand-build furniture of this kind from our workshop in Essex.
Carrying the kitchen through
The office is finished in the same classic shaker as the kitchen, hand-painted in French Grey 113 by Little Greene, a soft grey that takes the light well without going cold. Continuing one style and colour through from the kitchen is what stops a home office reading as an afterthought bolted onto the house. The furniture is completed with Armac Martin knobs and handles and a solid timber top.
The desk wall
The desk is symmetrical, with cupboards and drawers built either side in our classic shaker and open shelving above. We used tongue and groove in two places: inside the knee recess where the chair sits, and behind the open shelves. Both are surfaces you look straight at while working, and a plain flat panel there would have felt unfinished.
Light, heat and the rest of the room
The walls are papered in a linen-effect finish with a dark grey carpet underfoot, which does a lot for the acoustics of a room used for calls. The shutter blinds are the detail worth borrowing. They let the client control exactly where the light falls, so the room can be bright without the sun landing on the screen. Most home offices are positioned for the view and then fought with for the rest of the year. A column wall radiator handles the heat, which matters in a room occupied all day through winter rather than passed through.
The storage wall
Facing the desk is a full wall of handmade furniture, giving the storage that keeps a working room from silting up. Open shelves through the middle break up what would otherwise be an unbroken run of doors, and a timber worktop separates the cupboards above from the drawers below.
The result is a room that is straightforward to work in for a full day, which is the only real test of a home office.
Bespoke Home Office FAQs
How do you stop glare on a screen in a home office?
Control the light rather than the desk position. Shutters or adjustable blinds let you direct light away from the screen while keeping the room bright, which is more practical than turning the desk to face a wall. Positioning the screen side-on to a window rather than facing or backing it also helps.
Should a home office match the rest of the house?
If it is visible from other rooms, yes. Running the same door style, paint and hardware through from the kitchen is what makes fitted office furniture look built in rather than bought in. A room behind a closed door has more freedom.
What should be built into a fitted home office?
Desk space sized to what you actually work on, drawers within reach of the chair, cupboards for the things you would rather not see, and open shelving for what you use daily. A knee recess deep enough to sit properly at matters more than any of it.
Does a home office need its own heating?
It is worth considering. A room occupied all day in winter behaves differently from one passed through, and a spare bedroom converted to an office is often under-heated for that use. A column radiator was the answer here.
Where does Handmade Kitchen Company build home offices?
We design, hand-build and hand-paint bespoke home offices,
and whole-home furniture from our workshop in Essex, for clients across Essex, Hertfordshire and North London. If you would like to know more about our bespoke home office furniture,
today. We look forward to hearing from you.
