When you spend all day in an office space that isn’t optimal, you might start becoming aware of some discomforts – a tingling in the fingers here, a stiff neck there or just a general sense of ‘blah’ that begins to slow down your work and sap your enthusiasm. Do not ignore these warning signs. They’re more than a passing annoyance: they’re your body and mind’s way of telling you something’s wrong. One solution is to design a better office environment. Ergonomics are your friend. But if the words ergonomic and office instill fear in your bank account, take heart: a comfortable office need not be expensive. In fact, even if you have to refresh your office furniture and lighting, you can still create a comfortable workspace for well under $1,000. At the end of the day, you want to create a space that is good for your body and allows you to do your best work. Design an office that inspires you – a place where you enjoy spending your days. Because when you are enthusiastic about your home office, when being there makes you feel energized, you’ll find that you’re much more productive – and happier.
Your desk is one of the most important elements of a productive home office – and can be one of the most expensive! Here are some styles to get you thinking. But if you are on a tight budget you can create a great looking desk, with tons of space from a counter top and a couple of trestles, trimmed to the right height. Of course, the key to an ergonomic desk is not cost but physical comfort – the desk’s height, depth, storage, and free space should all fit your height and needs. This simple ergonomic desk calculator can help determine your ideal seat height, sitting elbow height range, and desk depth (eye to screen length). But remember, no mathematical formula is perfect: try out several desks in person to see which best fits your body, work style and office layout. You may also be considering the latest rage in home offices: a sit-to-stand office desk. Standing desks are said to boost productivity and be great for physical wellness but do they really? For many, the simple office chair is the single most important element of an ergonomic and productive office.
Because when you sit for 4, 6, 8 or even 12 hours a day, you stress your spine, neck and back. A good, ergonomic office chair supports your lower back (lumbar region) and encourages good posture. So how do you choose an ergonomic chair? Evaluate your favorite options based on seven basic criteria: seat height, seat depth, seat pan angle, lumbar support, backrest height, backrest angle, and armrests. Most of all, choose a comfortable chair – a chair that you’ll be happy to sit in for 4, 6, 8 or even 12+ hours a day. I know what you’re thinking, an ergonomic computer? Computer selection is up to personal preference, but every computer worker should pay attention to monitor height and keyboard positioning. And that holds true for laptop users, too – if you’re on the computer all day, everyday, then you should think about purchasing an external monitor and keyboard. Here are the two basic rules: Too often, we underestimate the importance of light and sound in the home office environment.
The Cliff’s Notes version is that you want plenty of one and very little of the other – and we’re talking about light and sound, respectively. Your office requires adequate lighting – big, open windows to let in the sun, if possible, and artificial lighting that’s bright enough to see, but not so bright that it creates glare or washes out your computer monitor. As for sound, do your best to reduce background noise. An office door, especially a solid door, goes a long way to eliminating distractions. If additional sound reduction is needed, consider purchasing a white noise machine or buying a white noise/meditation/yoga/nature sounds CD to help you focus on the task at hand. Keep your office clean and fresh – you’d be surprised how much a messy, funky office begins to unconsciously diminish your performance. And you may want to consider a diffuser that emits your favorite inspiring scent to uplift and invigorate, and help you stay mentally fresh. A peppermint based essential oil works great.
Finally, don’t underestimate your own role in creating a comfortable and productive office environment. Even if you have the most ergonomic office on the planet, you’re still at risk for “chair disease.” The only remedy: get up and move! Change your position, adjust your posture and, most importantly, move around often. Grab a cup of coffee or take a quick walk around the house. Do whatever it is you like to do, and be sure to do it every hour or so. You now know the basics of designing an inspiring and ergonomically correct home office. As you make adjustments, assess your office with San Diego State University’s excellent ergonomic self-evaluation; this easy checklist will help you ensure your new office setup won’t cause you any unnecessary physical pain. Chances are you are sitting while you read this. And it’s killing you. Sitting is linked to an encyclopedia of ill health, including diabetes, heart disease, circulatory problems, muscle degeneration, varicose veins, blood clots, a slow metabolic rate, every kind of neck and spine ailment imaginable, and the topper—premature death.
The more you sit, the faster your cells die. So for god’s sake, get up and do a few jumping jacks before you read the next paragraph. For the record, I did not write and research this piece at a standing desk, à la Winston Churchill. Nor did I shed pounds as I ambled in place at a treadmill desk. I wrote this sitting, hunched at all the wrong angles in an ergonomically unsound chair in my home office. I clock a lot of hours in said chair, so you would think I would invest in a sitting device that supports my spine and my life as a freelance writer. A practical person would do that. But I’m not practical when it comes to chairs, or most things. While I have invested time and energy in researching a wide variety of office chairs, or “task chairs” as they are more commonly known in office supply parlance, I have yet to buy one. Two reasons: good ergonomic chairs are ugly, and they are also very expensive. A sidebar here: I think I should weigh in on what an ideal desk chair looks like in my universe.
I feel like a workspace should be a creative hub, part mad professor’s office and part postmodern courtesan’s boudoir. The perfect office: part mad professor, part postmodern courtesan. I like cozy and eclectic spaces with a mix of modern and vintage pieces. I am drawn to pattern and color. Ideally, my desk area should be fun and a little frivolous, so when I sit in that dreaded chair I might actually enjoy myself and even laugh while I spin around in circles. This has never happened to me, but a writer with four jobs can dream. I am a huge fan of PB Teen. So, when it comes to desk chairs, I guess I have teenage girl taste. This is a Bohemian option: Here is a more modern option. The pink one is oddly appealing to me. Let the record show, I like pink as an accent color. I’m not advocating for a completely pink room—my inner tween has better taste than that. (For what it’s worth, I have a Pinterest board filled with delightful and charming office chair options.)
While the chairs I love are beautiful and fill me with a strange and giddy hope of what I could concoct whilst sitting in them, most of them would leave me in need of another kind of chair altogether—a wheelchair. Very few of those delightful chairs are in the least bit ergonomic. A little bit about “ergonomic”: it’s a word that is used and abused, particularly in the world of office chairs. I spoke at length on the subject with Devon Taylor, who works with Professional Physical Therapy in New York, where he specializes in ergonomic workplace evaluations. He gave me the 411 on what constitutes a real ergonomic task chair. 1. The chair should be able to move up and down. This seems like a no-brainer, but you want to be able to adjust your chair to perfectly match your desk height. 2. The chair seat, or “pan,” should also be able to move back and forth. Not everyone has the same-sized butt. More petite people should be able to pull their seats closer to their desks, if need be.
3. The chair should have arms and those arms should be adjustable and preferably move back and forth and also rotate inward and outward. Proper arm support is key to preventing a wide array of conditions, from neck and shoulder pain to carpal tunnel syndrome. If your neck or wrists hurt, adjust your armrests. If you don’t have armrests, get some. 4. The chair should have lumbar support. Support at the base of the spine helps you sit up straighter. And no one wants lower back pain. Lumbago sounds like a madcap dance, but it’s just another word for “ouch.” Ideally, you want to look like this when you are at your desk, with your elbows and knees bent at 90-degree angles. If you are shorter, footstools are a good idea: I also asked Devon about lying down and writing. Could being supine possibly be better for you than sitting? I worked with a blogger who wanted to write in bed. I basically told her you can’t do that too much, really at all.” So here are a few chairs that fit most of Devon’s requirements and some of my aesthetic ones.
As is the norm, adding adjustable features will cost you more. My favorite of the bunch is this one from Haworth. Again, it’s not cheap. But this color combo almost made my heart sing: Haworth’s Zody Task Chair · The cheapest I could find the Zody Task Chair for was $829. There were a few office chair outlets that had it for significantly less, if you don’t mind it in basic black, with fixed arms. Haworth also has the Lively Task Home Office chair in this bright yellow color, as well as some pretty standard office chair colors. It’s significantly cheaper at $349. Haworth’s Lively Task Home Office Chair · So what to do? I think I can compromise on aesthetics, which is huge for me. An ergonomic chair is a little bit like a pair of comfortable shoes: they’re not sexy or beautiful, but you grow to love and trust them out of necessity. If I can do it with shoes, I can do it with a chair. I could ask extended family to pitch in and give me the gift of a chair for Christmas and my birthday combined.
Or I could bite the bullet and put it on a low-interest credit card. What about an Indiegogo campaign for my spine? Or I could struggle on, as is, and nobly suffer the consequences. After all, other writers have managed under much worse circumstances. Did Edgar Allen Poe even have a chair? Did Shakespeare write at a desk? What was Emily Dickinson’s workstation like? FYI, none of those three lived past 55. What is a chair, really, but a form of support, a foundation of sorts, particularly if your job is to tell stories? And shouldn’t we invest in the things that hold us up and keep us healthy? My New Year’s resolution is to buy one of the chairs featured here for myself as a radical act of self-care. And I challenge you to investigate the things that are necessary and vital to your life and see if you can perhaps improve them. By the way, I have a hard time uttering words like “self-care”—it chafes against my half-Puritan roots. But we could all care for ourselves a little more and feel less guilty about it.