A Home Office That Works

By Kathy McCleary, special to HGTV.com
PHOTO
PHOTO
After six months of scraping old wallpaper, spackling, painting, hanging curtains, buying rugs and rearranging furniture, my favorite room in our new (to us) house is my home office. It’s in a sunny back corner of the house and has two big windows that let in light all day long.

We painted it a beautiful shade of lavender gray ("Dove" by Pratt & Lambert), with a milky white ceiling and trim. My husband painted a pair of old pine bookcases with a vibrant orange color on the back wall, and the same milky white on the sides, top and shelves. I found a lovely Tibetan rug at closeout, with rich shades of gray-green and orange.

PHOTO
PHOTO
On the walls I hung black and white photographs of our daughters, shot by a professional photographer and nicely framed in silvery wood. The room has some of my favorite treasures in it, including the small fountain in a hand-painted copper bowl that my daughter gave me for my birthday one year, and the musical snow globe of downtown Portland that friends gave us as a going-away gift (it plays Singin’ in the Rain, of course). The result is a room that feels calming and yet creative, and is just a pleasant place to be. I’m actually happy to get to work each morning.

Note: Kathy's home office came together for less than $200. Click here to find out how she built a beautiful home office on a budget.

Almost one in three households in America have some kind of home office, according to IDC, a research analysis firm based in Framingham, Mass. In 2004, there were 33.1 million "home office households" in the U.S., says Merle Sandler, senior research analyst at IDC, covering everything from full-time telecommuters to the part-time self-employed. The "offices" range from professionally decorated separate rooms to a corner of the kitchen table.

While the total number of home office households has remained flat over the past five years, those who have them are doing more with them, say design experts. More and more, "home offices are a haven for both husband and wife," says Chicago-based designer Mark McCauley, with many families creating home offices for each adult in the household.

Home offices are the one space in the home in which people "really indulge their personal style," says designer Greg Walsh, of the Walsh Design Group in Minneapolis , whether it’s a love of old-world maps or Irish style pubs. Walsh estimates that 80 percent of the homes his firm works on include home offices. Home offices are becoming "that fantasy corner penthouse office that you want to work in," Walsh says. "The reality is during the day that’s not where you work, but at home, you do."