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Interiors by room
The home office is the room most often designed last, and that's a mistake. It has three requirements, and all three shape the layout.
Light: a window behind you causes glare on the screen, and a window in front of you causes glare on camera. Where possible, the desk sits side-on to the window, and that's decided at the layout stage, not by moving the desk afterwards. Acoustics: a home office is increasingly a place for video calls, so soft surfaces such as a rug or upholstery do a practical job here, not just a decorative one. Storage: documents, equipment and cables go behind closed doors, or the background on a call won't look the way it was meant to.
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A common mistake in a home office is placing the desk facing the window or with its back to it; where the layout allows, side-on usually works best: a window behind you causes glare on the monitor, while a window in front of you causes glare on camera in video calls and, in the daytime, eye strain from the contrast. Which way the desk faces is decided at the layout stage, while you can still choose exactly where the socket goes and where the cable trunking runs, not after the furniture is in place and there's nowhere left to turn the desk. A desk lamp adds to that choice rather than replacing it.
A home office is increasingly a place for video calls, and large hard surfaces (a bare floor, glass, an untreated wall) increase reflected sound, and the effect is often more noticeable to the person on the other end of the call than to you in the room. So in a home office design, a rug, curtains and upholstered seating can do more than look good: they help absorb reflected sound. Where possible, the door to the home office is chosen with a tighter seal than the other doors in the home, so conversation doesn't carry into the corridor and disturb everyone else.
In a home office, documents, network equipment, the router and cables are usually tucked away in closed storage rather than left in view behind you on a video call: what the camera sees during a call is planned as carefully as the wall finishes. Shelving and units get a back panel or cable trunking, so the wires from the equipment don't hang in a visible bundle behind the chair.
A home office is most often carved out of a spare room or part of the living room, and the design settles this in advance: sound insulation on the wall shared with the next room, a door that closes tightly, sockets for several monitors and chargers at once. All of this is planned with the building services, not added later with extension leads once you've moved into the finished interior.