How To Carve Out Office Space In Your Small Living Room
If you work from home, having an office space is a must. But not everyone has a budget that allows them to rent or buy a home that has enough space to allow for a private office. Because of that, most of us have to get crafty. An obvious secondary spot to put a mini workstation is the living room, since it’s usually the biggest spot in the house. While wedging a desk into a corner sounds easy enough, it can be quite difficult to make your work nook just right. You want the workstation to flow with the rest of the decor of the room, but you also want the area to feel professional enough so you can pull up a chair and get into a business frame of mind.
This gets even harder when you don’t have much square footage to work with. But there are certain tricks that can help you achieve this goal. You can have your studious workstation, and a chic living room that doesn’t feel like a makeshift co-working space. Check out some examples below, and see how you can reimagine your own living room to make room for that desk.
1. Pop it Behind the Couch
Don’t be afraid to layer your furniture if your living room doesn’t have a ton of space. You can pop a thin desk behind your couch in order to carve out a workspace. Put a small area rug underneath and add in a table lamp to make the space feel slightly separate from the rest of the room.
Then, to help it blend into the space, you can layer the desk with more furniture. In this example, Helen added a glass cabinet behind the desk, giving the space some dimension.
2. Create a Makeshift Cubicle
Create a separate office space in your living room by creating “walls” with your desks. In this photo, one desk was put perpendicular to the couch, and another was put parallel with the three-seater. This created an L-shaped desk, and also helped to wall off the workspace from the rest of the room in a makeshift cubicle.
3. Take Up a Whole Wall
If your living room is narrow enough, you can designate one entire wall to your home office. This will create a clean, uninterrupted line in the room. The space will clearly be a living room, but one wall will be neatly earmarked as a work space. In order to achieve this, have the desk and cabinets span from wall to wall uninterrupted. To balance the look, use floating shelves to mimic that same line flow.
4. Make Use of a Nook
This little writing nook was easily converted into a snug mini office. A floating shelf was fit perfectly into the alcove, to serve as a desk, and the space feels appropriately separated from the rest of the living quarters.
5. Wedge it into a Corner
Another easy way to separate your office from the rest of the living room is to pop it into a designated corner. Put the desk into afar corner next to a window, being careful to pick out a desk and chair that goes with the rest of the room’s style. Here, the “office” blends into the living room with the help of a gallery wall.
6. Follow the Flow of the Room
This desk fits seamlessly into the living room because it follows the flow of the space. All the furniture is arranged into a circle around the fireplace, and the desk is placed as an outer layer of that same circle.
7. Put it in Front of a Bookcase
You no longer have to choose between adding in a bookcase to your living room, or doing the responsible thing and having a desk to work on. You can have the best of both worlds by simply placing the desk in front of your shelving unit.
8. Make Use of a Room Break
If you have a living room that has a six inch wall that juts out and divides the room slightly, make use of that break. Place your desk there, and divide the room between “living area” and “work area.”