Integrating a workspace into the living room

Not with its back to the room

A desk that stands with its back to the room looks as if it has been dropped in. A position side-on to the room is better.

There is also a practical point: the desk should not stand so that you look directly into the window, because the backlight dazzles – and not so that the window is behind you either, because it is then reflected in the screen. Side-on to the window is the right position.

If the room offers only a single possible place to put it, a roller blind or a translucent curtain helps. Both take the harshness out of the daylight without darkening the room, and can be adjusted over the course of the day.

Height and distance

A workspace at which you work for longer than half an hour at a stretch should keep to the usual dimensions – even if it looks like a piece of living room furniture.

For seated work, the table height is about 72–75 cm (28.3–29.5 in). Many sideboards and consoles are built higher and only work with a correspondingly higher chair or standing up. The top edge of the screen belongs at or just below eye level, and the viewing distance is about 50–70 cm (19.7–27.6 in). Free legroom is needed under the top; a piece of furniture with a continuous base can only be used standing up.

Depth also plays a part: for a laptop, around 50 cm (19.7 in) is enough; for a fixed screen, 60–80 cm (23.6–31.5 in) is usually needed to achieve that viewing distance at all. A top that is too shallow cannot be compensated for by the sitting position.

A piece of furniture that is not a desk

The simplest way to stop a workspace looking like an office is a piece of furniture that also makes sense without work.

A narrow console, a secretary desk with a fold-down flap, a sideboard of sufficient depth – provided the height and legroom are right. Pieces like these remain part of the furnishings when the laptop is gone. A height-adjustable desk with a metal frame does not: it visibly remains a piece of work equipment, which is right in a separate study and disruptive in the living space.

What counts here is how often the place is needed. If you sit there for several hours every day, you are better off with a proper desk and should integrate it through design instead – through material and colour that suit the rest of the room. If you only use the place occasionally, you gain more with the living room piece than you lose in ergonomics.

Cables are the real issue

What makes a workspace in the living space look restless is rarely the furniture; it is the cables, power supplies and chargers.

What helps: a power strip that is fixed under the top instead of lying on the floor. Cables of the same length instead of a mixture. And a fixed place for chargers so that they do not wander.

If a cable inevitably runs across the room, it belongs on the wall or under a cable cover. Loose on the floor, it is a tripping hazard and at the same time the most conspicuous part of the whole workspace. For bundling, hook-and-loop straps are better than cable ties, because they can be opened again when a device is added or removed.

This is unspectacular, but it makes more difference than any choice of material.

Storage for work materials

A workspace in the living space rarely fails because of the table; it fails because of what accumulates around it: documents, notebooks, pens, post.

Closed storage within reach makes sense – a drawer, a compartment behind a door, a box with a lid. Open shelves show their contents and therefore look like work even when no work is being done. The amount depends on what actually accumulates: if you manage with a laptop and a few documents, you need one compartment; if you file paper regularly, you need space for folders and should plan for it from the start, instead of managing piles on the work surface later.

Its own light

Task light is brighter and cooler than living room light. Both in the same room only work if they are kept separate.

A table lamp that lights only the work area solves this: it provides brightness exactly where it is needed and stays off after work – the room returns to living mode. Bringing a ceiling light for the whole room up to working brightness, on the other hand, destroys the mood in the entire room.

As for light colour: neutral white light from about 4,000 kelvin is suitable for working, warm white below 3,000 kelvin for the living area. Living room lights are almost always in the warm range – one more reason to choose the work lamp separately. Around 500 lux on the work surface is the guideline for brightness; in the rest of the room it can be considerably less.

The direction is also important: the light should come from the side opposite your writing hand, so from the left for right-handed people. Otherwise your own hand casts a shadow on the surface.

The end-of-day routine

For a workspace in the living space to work, it needs a defined state for the evening – and this has to be achievable in under a minute.

A compartment into which the laptop and documents go. A bowl for small items. A cloth over the screen, if it is a fixed monitor. Anything that takes more than a minute does not get done – and then the workspace remains a workspace in the evening too.

The end-of-day routine only works, however, if the destination is fixed and empty. A compartment that already has other things in it will not be used. It is therefore worth keeping this place free, even if it looks unused during the day.