You might be someone who loves working from home and finds it much better than having to commute to an office every day. Or you might be someone who finds that working from home is a distraction and you would rather be elsewhere.
If you’re one of the latter and you have no choice in the matter then you have a decision to make; you can either find a new job that allows you to work from an office, or you can change your home working environment to be something more pleasant. In fact, even if you already enjoy working from home, giving yourself a better environment to work in can make you a lot more productive. Read on to find out what steps to take to do this, and you might find that giving yourself a great place to work was all you needed to start appreciating the working from home life.
Heating And Cooling
If you live in an area where the summers are hot or the winters are cold – or both – then getting the right temperature level in your home office can be all but impossible. When you’re not comfortable because you’re too hot or too cold, you aren’t able to work productively. It will be difficult to concentrate. It’s a good reason why some people prefer to work outside of the home in a place that has better control of the temperature.
So of course, the answer to this issue must be that you need to take better control of the temperature in your own home. Doing this means that you can be more comfortable, but it has other benefits as well such as saving you money on your heating and cooling bills when you’re using your home’s thermostat in the right way.
If your home gets very hot then simply doing something like opening the windows won’t be enough; that might simply help to circulate warm air around, making things even warmer. Instead, you should invest in an air conditioning unit. Having good air conditioning in your home can make a huge amount of difference and help you to enjoy working from your spare bedroom, dining room, or even from your kitchen table much more enjoyable.
You can buy portable air conditioners to use in your home. The advantage of them is you can move them to different parts of your home. The only downside is they make a lot of noise, and you have to vent them through a window or a hole in your wall.
But, if you prefer having a more permanent solution, it might be worth getting a ducted HVAC solution installed by an air conditioning contractor that specializes in residential HVAC installations.
Soundproofing
Something else that can make working from him very uncomfortable is noise, especially if you’re not home alone. The more people who are in the property, the more noise they are going to make, even if everyone is working on their own projects and jobs too. Even if you are alone, the noises from around the house, from your neighbors, and from the outside world in general can all be disturbing.
This is where soundproofing can be very useful indeed. By soundproofing your walls, you can prevent any external noises from entering to disturb you and, just as useful, you can also prevent any noises you make from disturbing other people within the house. This will be good news if you are conscious of the fact that you have to have a lot of video call meetings or make a lot of phone calls.
Not all soundproofing materials work in the same way. Some are designed to block out all sounds, and some are designed to limit sounds instead. Depending on what you are looking for as your end result will determine what kind of soundproofing you need. Some of it can be installed yourself, and some will need a professional, so make sure you do enough research before coming to a final decision.
Redecorate
You don’t have to redecorate your entire home when you’re using it as your base of work – unless you want to, of course. However, redecorating the room you work in can be a good idea. If you are using a spare room, something like a bedroom that no one else uses, or a room specifically designed to be used as a study, then you can redecorate it to look like an office space. Make it different from the rest of your home and it will feel much more like you’re walking into a workspace every morning and going home every evening.
You could use wooden flooring instead of carpet (or vice versa). If your home has curtains at the windows, why not invest in some blinds for your office? Make sure you have a real desk, not just a table you’ve taken from elsewhere, and the same goes for your chair. It should be an ergonomic office chair, not an armchair or a kitchen stool. On top of this, try not to have any furniture in the room that you wouldn’t have in an office. If there is a spare bed right beside your desk, it’s never going to feel quite like a real office, and that means you’ll never feel truly comfortable working there.
Natural Light
Natural light is something that can truly improve the mood, and it’s good for your overall health as well as your mental health too. That’s why it’s important to step outside at least once a day to breathe in the fresh air and feel the sun on your skin. It’s also why you should have as much natural light coming into your workroom as possible. The more natural light you have, the more pleasant that space will be, helping you to be more productive (and save money on your lighting bills).
Depending on where you are working, this is not always an easy thing to accomplish, but there are certain measures you can take, and depending on your budget and your requirements, you can make almost any space more full of natural light.
The easiest thing to do is to ensure that your windows are as uncovered as possible – don’t have anything on windowsills that might be blocking the light, and if you have curtains you should tie them back to allow more light in. Also, position your desk so that the light is coming towards you. If it’s too bright, you can use special films on the glass to diffuse the light a little but still get the benefit from it.
If you work in a room that has no windows or that only allows a small amount of natural light in, don’t worry; you can still enjoy the benefits of the sunlight. The best thing you can do is to invest in a natural light lamp. This lamp sits on your desk and shines the equivalent of natural light into the room. This is almost as good as the real thing, and if you can’t get natural light any other way, it’s an ideal compromise.
Have Your Own Room
Something we’ve mentioned briefly above is having your own workspace, and although this is ideal it’s not something that everyone can enjoy. If you live with other people, you might only be able to work in your bedroom or in the kitchen, for example, and neither of these areas is a good workspace – the bedroom shouldn’t be used for work as it’s meant to be a place of relaxation, and the kitchen is one of the busiest rooms in the house; you’re sure to be disturbed. Even if you live alone, having a dedicated office that you can close the door on when you’ve finished working will be better for your mental health, your stress levels, and your productivity.
So what can you do if you really can’t find your own space to work in? The answer is to make one. If you have a backyard, then installing a specially designed pod can be ideal. You’ll be able to design it to your specifications and, since it’s away from the house, it will make the idea of working from home much easier to deal with. Or why not use the attic in your home? If it’s currently only used for storage, you could investigate having it transformed into a usable room. If you do this, make sure you speak to a roofing company about installing some windows or perhaps a skylight up there to make it truly comfortable.
Change It Up
As we’ve said, working from home isn’t for everyone, and even for those who love it, sometimes there can still be days when you would rather be anywhere but in the same four walls you’ve been in for weeks on end. If this is how you feel, it’s time to change things up and make your working environment a little more diverse.
Having an office at home is a great start, but if changing your routine is what will make you happiest and most productive this is what you’ll need to do. One way to do this is to find somewhere else to work once in a while. Take a walk to a local café or coffee shop and spend some time working from there. Or, on a sunny day, head to the park or even the beach. What about going to a friend’s house and using their spare room when they don’t need it? You can even rent a desk in a communal office – this is especially useful if the reason you don’t like working from home is that you miss being around other people.
In the end, working from home is something that is clearly here to stay, and more and more companies are choosing to work in this way. Therefore, making yourself as comfortable as possible in whatever way you can when you’re working remotely has to be a priority.
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