Here’s a quick tour of the home office I recently finished building. If you’re thinking of designing your own office, hopefully this will give you some ideas and inspiration.

A quick summary of things I did right:

• Lots of light switches meaning very flexible task lighting (including dimmers).
• Very large closet (with its own light).
• Wire shelving that is both strong and configurable. Additionally, the light can easily penetrate the openings in order to reach lower shelves. (Use foam core board on any shelves that hold straps or other small items that you don’t want to fall through.)
• Two workstations configured for different kinds of tasks. My primary workstation also raises and lowers.
• Liberal amounts of insulation, especially in the ceiling. Insulation obviously helps keep the temperature comfortable, but it also keeps the noise down.
• Bamboo flooring. It’s cheap, durable, environmentally friendly, and looks as good as more expensive hardwoods, in my opinion.
• Reading chair. Sometimes it’s nice to get away from the computer and relax in a nice comfortable chair.
• Isolated circuit. My office is on its own electrical circuit, so if something else in the house trips a breaker, it won’t shut off power in my office.
• Coaxial and network jacks. My wireless signal is pretty strong down here, but I went ahead and ran a network cable anyway for the additional bandwidth.

Things I did wrong:

• No power outlets at desk-height. I put in a lot of power outlets (12 in a relatively small room), but I didn’t install any at desk height. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me until after the drywall was in.
• No track lighting. I used recessed lighting rather than track lighting. Tracks would have given me some additional configurability, and the ceilings are probably high enough.