How to Design Your Home Office to Fit Your Function

Do you work from home these days?

As it turns out, more and more of us are doing just that.

According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the United States Census Bureau, about 9 percent of us (13.4 million workers out of 142 million) worked at home at least one day a week in 2014. That’s up 35% for the decade. And it’s the so-called Knowledge Workers in the computer, engineering and science fields that are really driving the the “working from home” model — their numbers increased 69% over the decade, with 432,000 of them working from home in 2014.

As we look around the country for regional trends, Boulder, Colorado was the breakout star, with 10.9% of workers working primarily from home. Looking at the larger, regional statistical reporting areas from the Census, here are the 10 metro areas with the highest percentage of full-time, home-based workers:



Rank Metropolitan Area Number Percent
1 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 61,911 7.3
2 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 66,384 6.5
3 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 77,163 6.2
4 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 126,057 6.2
5 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 106,373 6
6 Raleigh-Cary, NC 31,850 5.9
7 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 136,442 5.8
8 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 48,880 5.5
9 St. Louis, MO-IL 90,098 5.5
10 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 70,097 5.3


As outlined in the table above, the Austin, Texas region —home of Formaspace — led the pack with more than 7% of this region’s employees working at home.

Interestingly, the US Census notes there’s a definite regional trend underway: employers based in the West are much more likely to allow employees to work from home.



When designing your home office, you should determine ‘Which kind of Home Office Worker are you?’
The U.S. Census breaks home-based workers into three categories:

“Home Workers” who work at home exclusively
“Mixed Workers” who split their time between home and a remote office
“Onsite Workers” who work exclusive at a remote office.


But from our experience as suppliers of Home Office furniture and storage solutions, we go further. We break it down into seven categories, based on the type of work you’ll be doing from home.



The seven categories are:



The “Always On” Home Extension of the Work Office
The Growing “Hobby” Home Office
The Delivery-Based “Transactional” Home Office
The Small Repair Service Home Office
The Vacation Rental Home Office
The Personal Services Home Office
The Traditional Home Office


The “Always On” Home Extension of the Work Office

Workers who constantly take their work back and forth between home and work need to create a space we call the “always on” home office.

It’s essentially an extension of your work office built in your home — a place where you can step inside and instantly be productive when you get that late night email from a customer or your boss.

Read more... formaspace.com/articles/design-home-office-to-fit-your-function/?utm_source=openpr&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=article-061616

Formaspace advances the spirit of discovery and creation through the design and manufacture of custom technical furniture, accessories, and services. We develop elegant, practical, flexible solutions for customers in laboratory, technical, and industrial environments.

1100 E. Howard Lane ste 400
design.consultant@formaspace.com
800.251.1505

This release was published on openPR.