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Article Updated February 2026
The nature of modern business continues to allow a growing number of people to work from home. According to the latest UK and global trends, flexible working has shifted from a pandemic necessity to a long-term feature of employment:
- In Great Britain, around 28% of working adults now work in a hybrid model, splitting time between home and office, while 14–16% work fully remotely as of 2025 data. Combined, up to 44% of adults work from home at least some of the time.
- UK employees average 1.8 remote workdays per week, one of the highest rates in Europe.
- Around 74% of UK organisations support hybrid working, and most remote-capable employees prefer hybrid arrangements.
However, ongoing debates about return-to-office policies and tax relief changes underscore that working from home is evolving, not vanishing. For example, UK tax relief for home-working expenses is set to be abolished in April 2026, affecting around 300,000 remote workers.
Even so, creating a productive, well-designed home office remains essential for efficiency, focus, and well-being.
Find an Ideal Room
When you start planning a home office, you need to find an ideal location for it. The size of the room is the first thing you should look into. If you plan to use it as storage as well, you might need a bigger room. On the other hand, if what you have in mind is just an office, you literally need the room to fit your desk, which means you could work out of a closet.
Still, even more, important than the size of the room is its location. It is always better to work in the room facing yard than the one facing the street. The sole reason behind this is to cancel out the distracting noise coming from the outside. Furthermore, if you are an early riser or just a person who highly values the advantages of working early, you might want to take the room that is facing west. Even though early sunrays can be dazzlingly beautiful, they also reduce your vision and can be highly distracting. Because of all this, basements are an incredibly popular choice.
Prioritizing and Budget-Making
In most cases, you won’t have that much room to spare, which means that you will have to be resourceful. You need to know what to do with every inch of the room, but this also means that you will have to prioritize a bit. No matter how much you wanted it, you simply cannot equip your home office with everything that a real office has.
There are two reasons for this restriction. The first one is that you won’t have enough space, and the second is that you won’t have enough money to buy it all. Luckily, there is no need for this either. For example, your office will need a desk, a computer, a printer, a scanner and even a fax machine. On the other hand, a water-cooler is not a necessity. Plan both your budget and your layout according to this.
Hire Professional Help
As we already mentioned that a lot of people use the basement as their home office and while this has its advantages, it may have its drawbacks, as well. First of all, most basements don’t get a lot of foot traffic, maintenance and air flow. This is why it might be a good idea to contact professionals to help optimize it for your office.
One of the things you want to do is hire cleaning services Chicago for efficiency. Additionally, since you will probably want to plug in all kinds of appliances down there, you should also hire an electrician to check the installations. Finally, if you want to use it as a storage room, you need to find a way to utilize it to the last inch. The experts from Dexion NZ claim that pallet racking is by far the most efficient way to do this.
Those who worked from home at least once in their life know exactly how hard it is to create good working conditions outside of the office. Luckily, where there is a will, there is always a way. Sure, this may cost a lot of your time and resources, but when you consider the end results, it is usually more than worth it.
You may also like: How Office Furniture Can Support New Ways Of Working
Image source: elements.envato.com
About the Author
Diana Smith is a full time mom of two beautiful girls interested in topics related to business and technology. In her free time she enjoys exploring new low cost advertising opportunities.
