Before designing home office, take inventory

The requirements differ greatly if you are going to be working full time from your home, or if it’s just a place to do occasional work. Either way, most buyers seem to want a room or space that can be closed off from view. Take inventory when designing an optimal home office scenario in your new home or when retrofitting your existing home:

• Foremost, understand if your local government, homeowner's association or other pertinent organizations prohibit certain types of businesses or work-from-home situations. You don't want to buy that great new property with a home office in mind only to find such is not allowed.
• Likewise, check with your accountant and other valued professionals about any considerations they may want you to take into account.
• Location. Do you want to be in the middle of things, where you can keep an eye on the rest of the family or do you want more privacy? A lot of clients romanticize one type of home office when in reality they work best in a different type of space. For example, picturing yourself with the family and a nice fire close by may be nice, but will you be productive?
• Location also is key if you are going to have clients come to you or if you need to be near them. That's important for some of my clients, while others never see their clients, who are states or even oceans away.
• If you will be having clients/associates come by or work with you, you could possibly have a dedicated exterior entrance and space that will accommodate more than one person. Consider all aspects of the space, from where you sit and work to having enough outlets for charging all of our wonderful technology.
• Increasingly, those who work at home need assurances, for themselves and for clients, that information is kept private, including under lock and key. So take into account regulatory considerations or at least organizational policies when plotting your perfect home office.
• Light. I have a client who was perfectly happy situating his occasionally used home office in his unfinished basement, but working in dark or unfinished space is not an optimal working environment for most people and may not be good for your paperwork, technology or inventory.
• Get creative when forecasting space needs. Not only thinking if you need space for other people but could you put equipment or files or work samples somewhere other than your home office, or must they be close at hand?
• We've already touched on sharing space, but it bears repeating. Many folks, due to lack of extra rooms, opt to combine their office space with a guest room, figuring that it's not a full-time room use. Make sure that's really doable for you when you have guests.
• What if you have more than one person working from home? My husband began working from home several years ago, so we made adjustments to minimize disrupting our home life or either business. Dual, separate home offices enable us to have our own work environment without encroaching on each other's space or sound. I will occasionally have a client come by the house, so my office is located adjacent to the home's public spaces, whereas his work is solitary and was a natural to be located in a former bedroom. We call or email or text during the work day. Really.

Know the timeline or lifespan of your work space. If working from home is temporary or occasional, your space needs and sacrifices may be very different than if you need an all-day, every-day work space.

Similarly, predetermine your triggers for no longer working at home. For instance, if you are a business startup, what is your vision of when the office will move out of the home? Consider revenue, staffing and peace of mind. Personally, we agreed that our home offices were not designed to accommodate additional staffing. So, if one of us adds an employee who needs to physically work with us, that office would transition out of the home.