Comment by baliex
1 day ago
Having just moved house, this is fantastic inspiration.
To be fair, the huge window by the desk in the article makes it a naturally more appealing space than my own. But it’s enough to make me rethink the layout we have here so far. Especially since we want space for non digital projects too.
I'm moving house soon. Still yet to work out the home office plans.
There's an area on the middle floor landing that could make an ideal little desk area.
It's something like 150cm wide (my existing desk is 140cm) and deep enough for my 70cm deep desk and existing chair. There is a window directly ahead. The only problem is isolation, there's no door to close things off (noise or distractions), but I may be able to make do with a heavy curtain and my existing noise cancelling headphones.
This would mean that the spare bedroom (which would usually be the home office) could be an alternative home office for myself or my wife, and more of a spare bedroom for visitors. Right now our existing spare bedroom is a dedicated office.
I'm going to use the article as inspiration for the spare bedroom and not just putting the desk up against the wall as I would usually do, but the planning depends on what size bed we can get in this room as well as a desk.
As someone with full-height windows at home — depending on your climate (continental Europe here, so similar to NYC or Boston, with below freezing in the winter and 40C/104F in the summer) — might not work too well. You lose space for shelves and such, opening a window can let the rain in, floor will get very cold, and depending on the glass type, you either get it to be like a greenhouse/too hot in the summer, or not leveraging the same effect in the autumn/winter. In general, on sunny days air can get stuffy even in the winter.
It can also be too bright for some types of work during sunny days — especially if facing East or West and the sun is low. All of this depends on the orientation too, and facing north it is probably perfect.
They are otherwise beautiful and have many pros: but I wanted to warn of some practical drawbacks too.
There's something visually appealing about full-height windows, but they're not worth it in the long run. You get used to them fast, they're less energy efficient, they're more expensive. If they aren't fixed, the lower part being closer to the ground is more prone to water ingress. I woudn't say they don't make sense at all, but large continuous windows that aren't full height provide almost all the benefits in daily use, with many advantages.
I also just moved to a new house, and am very happy this showed up. I'm trying to do a complete furniture refresh for my office, declutter, and reorganize.
I'm lucky enough that there is a large window in the room, and I also only use one monitor. While I think my room is not as large as his, I can still make it work.
The one thing that was stopping me was cable management - but with clever furniture placement, I think the cables can mostly be hidden.
The non digital side makes total sense and I would love to mimic this