Nowadays a home office is quite common and most people have at least a dedicated area for a computer. But what do most people use to set up their home offices?

Over the years we’ve seen a variety of furniture used in home offices, however probably the most common is the flat pack style of desk which comes from popular furniture retailers such as Ikea and Argos. But are flat pack desks a good idea?

There is probably an immediate benefit to purchasing a flat pack desk – the cost. Normally flat pack desks are cheaper than buying a standard office desk, mainly because they are mass produced and possibly not as robust as desks found in offices. Another plus point is there’s a wide selection of options; normal desks, hideaway desk options, trolley style and ones which incorporate shelving units to name a few.

As there is such a wide selection of flat pack furniture in the market place, and if you are considering buying some, you might want to consider the purpose it’s being used for, as well as how many hours you will be sitting at the desk.

Home offices are used for a variety of purposes, it could be half an hour in the evening catching up with emails and sorting out home accounts, or actually spending up to nine hours days sat in front of your computer. Either way, how long you spend at your desk will help you determine which style of desk you should go for.

Pull out keyboard tray

(image from Ikea.com)

Desks with pull out keyboard trays are very popular for home offices as  the tray can be tucked away minimising the intrusion into the room. The downside of keyboard trays is that, unless you are fairly short, often the keyboard trays are set at the wrong height so that you effectively drop your shoulders or lower your chair to work at a comfortable height – both of which options are detrimental to your back in the long term.

Hideaway desk

(image from Argos.com)

The major plus point of a hideaway desk is that you can close the doors and everything is tucked away.  However, the majority of hideaway desks always have shelving units underneath to store items like printers and files, so where do your legs go?

Often the room allocated for your legs is not sufficient, so sitting for a long period of time at this style of desk would be uncomfortable. Beware also of full cupboard hideaway desks, where the monitor is also enclosed, there needs to be sufficient height between shelves that you could raise the monitor up to get it at the right height. If the shelves are too tightly arranged (and can’t be repositioned) the monitor could end up too low.

Trolley style desk

(image from Argos.com)

Another style of desk where the plus point is that everything is stored in one central location, all fairly tucked away making it ideal for people short on space. But this design has the same problem as hideaway desks. There just isn’t enough room for your legs underneath. So either the ankles are pressed against the bottom shelf or you sit further back and stretch forward to the keyboard tray.

Standard desk style

(image from Ikea.com)

It make not look as stylish but for people working all day in a home office, the traditional desk style is still the best bet. The top has plenty of room for a monitor, keyboard and mouse, as well as ample work space. Ikea also offers height adjustable legs on several styles and these are a big plus point particularly if you are tall. Getting a desk at the right height is invaluable to helping prevent back pain, and none of the previous options facilitate this.

A lot of the flat pack desks have one thing in common; the depth of the desk (front to back) was much shorter than a desk that you would expect to find in an office. So it is worth very carefully checking how deep a desk is before it’s purchased, as you need to be able to position the monitor about an arm’s distance away. If it’s too close you’ll be leaning back in your chair to get away from it.

The big downside of flat pack furniture is that you have to assemble it, of course. Quite a few of the websites we looked at had customer comments’ sections and the assembly instructions seemed to be one of the most widely commented on area, everything from “very easy to put together” to “ this was a nightmare and nothing seemed to fit”. However,  on the whole if you are fairly competent putting together flat pack furniture should be possible, if not a little frustrating….

See our full range of ergomonic furniture for the home that will provide support and comfort at all times.