7 Small Changes That Can Make Your Home Office More Comfortable

Working from home has plenty of advantages. There is no commute, making lunch is usually cheaper than buying it, and you have considerably more control over your surroundings than you would in a shared office.

That freedom doesn’t automatically make a home office comfortable, though. A dining chair that seemed fine for answering emails for an afternoon can become much less appealing after several months of full working days. Glare that is mildly irritating at 9 a.m. may be impossible to ignore by mid-afternoon.

For freelancers, founders, and small-business owners, these seemingly minor irritations matter because the home office is often where much of the business actually happens. Fortunately, making it better doesn’t necessarily require an expensive desk, renovation or elaborate office makeover.

Here are seven smaller changes worth considering.

1. Get Better Control of Natural Light

Natural light is welcome in most home offices, but more isn’t always better. Direct sunlight falling across a laptop or monitor can create reflections and glare, while a bright window immediately behind a screen can make viewing uncomfortable.

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) advises display screen equipment users to arrange screens and lighting to avoid reflections and glare (Health and Safety Executive [HSE], n.d.-a).

Before moving your entire office, experiment with controlling the window. Depending on the position of the room, that might mean adjusting a blind during the brightest part of the day or using curtains to soften incoming light.

If a window is particularly wide, tall or unusually shaped, looking at custom curtains online can be useful because made-to-measure options can be sized to the individual window, with different fabrics and linings providing varying degrees of light control.

The aim isn’t to make the office dark. It is to create light you can adjust as the sun moves.

2. Fix Your Screen Position Before Buying a New Chair

When your neck or shoulders ache at the end of the day, it is easy to assume the chair is the problem. Sometimes, however, the screen is encouraging an awkward posture.

HSE guidance recommends positioning the top of the screen roughly level with the eyes and approximately an arm's length away. The screen and keyboard should also be directly in front of the user rather than positioned in a way that requires repeatedly twisting the body (HSE, n.d.-b).

Laptop users have an obvious difficulty: the keyboard and screen are physically attached. For prolonged laptop use, the HSE suggests using a separate keyboard and mouse so that the screen can be raised (HSE, n.d.-b).

You don’t necessarily need specialist equipment. A stable laptop stand can work well, but even a secure riser may improve the position considerably when paired with an external keyboard and mouse.

3. Give Your Eyes Somewhere Else to Look

Hours of concentrated screen work can be tiring even when your workstation is well organised. According to the HSE, extended periods of display screen work can contribute to temporary problems including tired eyes, discomfort, and headaches, although screen work itself doesn’t cause permanent eye damage (HSE, n.d.-c).

One useful change is simply arranging the room so the computer isn’t the only thing in your visual field.

If possible, position the desk somewhere you can periodically look towards a window or across a longer distance. It is also worth checking whether your screen brightness makes sense for the surrounding room rather than automatically leaving it at its highest setting.

Regularly looking away also tends to happen more naturally when the office contains something beyond the monitor worth looking at.

4. Make Moving Around Part of the Setup

Comfort isn’t only about finding the perfect sitting position and staying there.

For employees who regularly use display screen equipment, HSE guidance states that work should include breaks or changes of activity. It recommends shorter, more frequent breaks over infrequent long ones and says these changes should allow people to move around, stretch or change posture (HSE, n.d.-d).

That principle is equally useful when you work for yourself.

Rather than treating movement as another task to remember, arrange the working day so some activities naturally require getting up. Take a phone call while standing. Keep the printer away from the desk. Refill your water between tasks. Walk to another room when you need to think through a problem.

None of these replaces regular exercise. They simply stop the desk from becoming somewhere you remain planted for hours without noticing.

5. Deal With the Small Noises You Keep Tolerating

Noise doesn’t have to be loud to become irritating.

Perhaps it is traffic outside, a washing machine in the next room, or conversations elsewhere in the house. When concentration matters, repeated interruptions can make an otherwise pleasant room difficult to work in.

Start by identifying the noise rather than immediately buying headphones or attempting to soundproof the room. Closing the door may solve one problem. Moving the desk away from a shared wall may help with another. Soft furnishings can also make a sparsely furnished room feel less acoustically harsh.

For noise you can’t control, headphones or steady background sound may be useful. The important thing is to find a solution that works with the kind of work you actually do. Someone spending half the day on client calls will have different requirements from someone writing reports alone.

6. Make Frequently Used Things Easy to Reach

A home office becomes frustrating when simple tasks involve hunting for chargers, notebooks or paperwork.

Instead of organising everything according to how an office ought to look, organise it according to frequency of use. Items you reach for every day belong within easy reach. Things used monthly can live in a cupboard or drawer.

The same applies digitally. A desktop covered with files and a browser with dozens of permanently open tabs can create its own type of clutter.

The goal isn’t a minimalist workspace. It is a workspace where routine actions require less unnecessary effort.

This matters particularly for small-business owners who may switch rapidly between sales, administration, customer queries, bookkeeping, and operational work throughout the day.

7. Create a Clear End to the Working Day

One disadvantage of working at home is that the office never technically closes.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has identified blurred work-home boundaries and digital presenteeism among the wellbeing challenges associated with remote and hybrid working (CIPD, 2021). Its research also stresses the importance of supporting people in managing boundaries between work and home (CIPD, 2020).

A physical home office with a door makes that separation easier, but it isn’t essential.

Create a short closing routine instead. Shut down the computer rather than leaving it running. Put paperwork away. Write tomorrow's first task on a notepad and leave it there. If your desk is in a living area, even clearing work materials from sight can help distinguish working time from the rest of the evening.

For someone running a business, there will inevitably be occasions when work spills beyond conventional office hours. The point is to make that the exception rather than allowing work to occupy every spare moment simply because the laptop is nearby.

Conclusion

A comfortable home office doesn’t have to look like an expensive corporate workspace. Often, the most useful improvements are much smaller: reducing glare, raising a screen, changing where frequently used items are kept or building a little more movement into the day.

It is worth paying attention to the annoyances you have gradually stopped noticing. The cable you step over every morning, the afternoon sun across the monitor, and the laptop that makes you lean forward may each seem insignificant on their own.

When you spend several hours a day in the same space, however, small improvements accumulate. A home office that works well should make it easier to concentrate on running the business rather than constantly reminding you that something about the room isn’t quite right.

References

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2020). Working from home: Assessing the research evidence. 

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2021). Hybrid working: Practical guidance. 

Health and Safety Executive. (n.d.-a). Working safely with display screen equipment: Training and information. 

Health and Safety Executive. (n.d.-b). Working safely with display screen equipment: Good posture. 

Health and Safety Executive. (n.d.-c). Working safely with display screen equipment: Eyes and eyesight testing. 

Health and Safety Executive. (n.d.-d). Working safely with display screen equipment: Work routine and breaks.