Talk to us about office design →When readers buy products and services discussed on our site, we often earn affiliate commissions that support our work. Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Home office furniture ideas Do you have feedback about this page? Major DEALS on major appliances Huge selection of fitbit ON SALE SAVE BIG on top brand luggage Visit the Mother's Day Gift Guide for the best gift ideasFuel your creativity and motivate productivity with a workstation that fits your home office needs. Coordinate with your existing office furniture such as your office chair, bookcases, shelves and filing cabinets to create the ideal home office or to dress up any other space in your house. b Similar in design to a console table, this workstation nestles up nicely against an entryway wall and seamlessly blends with other typical entryway furniture. Featuring front panels that drop down into tabletops, the desks' crisp lines and space-saving form add elegance and personality to any space.

Look for an option with extra shelving for added organization and display. Work Table: The work table's oversized shape is balanced by the design of its elegant lines. used chair and a half with ottomanThough the extra space is meant to give owners more room to work on projects and crafts or to organize creative materials, it also allows the table to be right at home as the centerpiece of the dining room. folding chair buy online indiaTake advantage of the table's dual functionality and use it somewhere less expected, like the entryway, and use as needed.beach chair for sale philippines To give your home office a traditional look, opt for an eco-friendly reclaimed wood tabletop. office chairs for sale montreal

Cherry, walnut and wood with a medium to dark finish will give the workstation that classic academic look, while black or white painted wood brings the material into modernity. old rocking chair ebayTo keep some semblance of rusticity but also to add a hit of freshness, look for wood frames with floating tempered glass tabletops. buy office chairs bangaloreGlass atop metal frames is an industrial office look, and the angles created are sharp and urban. leather tub chairs ebayMetal framing paired with a wood top adds interesting texture and a distinct character to the space.baseball glove chair saleErgonomics is the science of arranging or designing things for efficient use, mostly as prevention for neck pain, low back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome. buy automatic wheelchair

Unfortunately, ergonomics is usually interpreted unimaginatively, with the result that most people think that ergonomics is just about choosing office chairs and changing the tilt on your keyboard. Lots of things can be said about office chairs and the tilt of your keyboard — but it’s only the tip of the ergonomics iceberg. What a perfect comic strip I found! This exactly illustrates what I’m trying to say: that conventional ergonomics solutions may be missing the point, and often get out of hand. What discussions about ergonomics usually miss is that long work days in a chair are just a fundamentally bad idea — no matter how good your chair is. Ergonomics should not be focussed on ways of making people more comfortable with a bad situation — almost a conspiracy against workers — but rather on improving the situation. Conventional ergonomics, when “arranging things for efficient use” — tends to exclude the most important thing in your workstation: you! The consequences of ergonomics that ignore you range from the irritating to the traumatic.

This fascinating collection of videos of ergonomic disasters has some examples. This article offers a quick look at some ideas from a better, more worker-o-centric kind of ergonomics, and “arranging” a few things other than your workstation. What were the bodies like on the beach? Ugly and white and ruined by offices. Without a doubt, the single most problematic “design” feature of most of my client’s lives is a lack of frequent and diverse activity throughout the working day. If you are glued to your desk for hours at a time, getting up and moving around for at least one minute in every fifteen will make a significant difference in your health. This is called “microbreaking,” if you want the buzzword.Damn straight it is: if ergonomics is the science of arranging things for efficient use, then what’s more important than arranging yourself? Right out of your chair! Your employer’s short-sighted priority may be to have you in your chair as much as possible — in the name of efficiency!

A better priority is to have you moving around so that you don’t ruin your body in your chair — which would be terribly inefficient! I can’t imagine a better example of how misplaced ergonomics priorities can be than the secretary who practically goes to war with her employer to get the right chair, keyboard, mouse and desk … but wears high heels. Of course, men are generally less stubborn about this issue, but we also need to pay more attention to the quality of our shoes. Insensible footwear is probably a culprit in a wide variety of conditions from head to toe. I do not believe that they are an unmitigated disaster. In fact, there’s evidence that women adapt reasonably well to high heels. But don’t force your body to adapt to a chronic stress if you can live without the fashion option. If you’re troubleshooting a pain problem, losing the heels is an easy and worthwhile experiment. So switch to sensible shoes. As ergonomics advice goes, good shoes are much better bang for your buck than the right office chair — at least as a worthwhile experiment.

An obsolete prescription for your glasses is one of the most common causes of tension headaches. An update can work small miracles. Sunglasses can also provide relief from eye strain. One client provided a less obvious example recently: he wears trifocals, and must tip his head back to view his computer screen through the narrow bottom viewing area of the glasses, a postural disaster. A pair of reading glasses — computer glasses, that is. Ask your optometrist for other ideas about how to ease eye strain. Most ergonomics consultants — and ergonomic office chair manufacturers — would have you believe that what you really need is an especially good chair. But consider: do you really want a chair that encourages you to remain seated in it? The real hazard of modern life for most people is stillness itself, not the position in which you are still. All positions are a bad idea in six-hour doses, no matter how ergonomically correct. I have gone so far down this line of thought as to wonder if it would actually be a good idea to work in an uncomfortable chair, for the obvious reason that I would be less likely to sit in it for long stretches!

This tip is actually compatible with conventional wisdom, however. An uncomfortable chair might discourage me from sitting in it, but I wouldn’t get much work done. As long as I have to work I would like to have a good ergonomic chair, and I recommend the same to you — buy the best, it’s a lot cheaper than pain — and there’s lots of great information about that out there. There, that should keep the ergonomic chair lobby happy. What you won’t hear anywhere else, though, is that you should also get any old cheap stool or second chair, as well as a wobble cushion such as a Disco ‘O’ Sit or Sissel Balance Fit, and then alternate between four sitting methods throughout your day: Now you’ve got some variety, and that alone is worth as much as the best chair money can buy, for a fraction of the price. The ubiquitous handset telephone is a major troublemaker, yet is routinely ignored in the average egonomics assessment! Headset telephone technology has become much more effective and affordable in the last three years, and of course headsets are standard for people who work in call centres where the issue is paramount.

Meanwhile, Joe Office Worker is on the phone almost as much, but usually pinching a handset between ear and shoulder — and you’re worried about your chair? If you spend a lot of time on the phone — and approximately more than an hour a day would qualify as a lot — you can’t afford not to use a headset. Based on my personal experience, I recommend that you avoid phones designed as headset telephones, and instead simply purchase a good cordless telephone and plug a good headset into it. You can find sturdy headsets at Radio Shack. And as a bonus, here is a quick review of some conventional ergonomics advice … There are many well-established basic rules for how to use a computer to minimize repetitive strain injuries and fatigue. IBM publishes an excellent guide (see Healthy Computing) to setting up your work station. It seems like almost everyone seems to need to do this. Even I rearranged my desk when I read up on the subject! Here are some of the highlights …