Home offices with just the right balance of personality and productivity

It's not easy to strike the perfect balance in one's home office. Make it too cozy and filled with personal objects and you might end up using your desk to curl up with a good book or flip through photo albums. Make it too industrial and sterile and..well, feel like you're back in a cubicle. It's important to make your work space pleasing to you, and while everyone's ideal work set up is different, you have to have the tools of your trade on hand and a comfortable arrangement that allows you to hunker down and focus without distraction.

Here are some spaces that seem to have the balance down...

Perfect...beautiful...need I say more?


Plants add some life and homeyness, the ample shelving creates space for supplies, and the unorthodox desk combines function and beauty.

For some people less is more. Give them a huge desk and every inch of surface space will be occupied with stuff, leaving no space to work. This desk is clever because it has minimal surface space for accumulating clutter, but a leaf underneath pulls out for work surface.


I use a table as a desk as in the above image, because I'm able to keep things organized and most of the surface stays bare, which gives me enough room alongside my computer to spread out my magazines and/or sketch.



This space gets it's warmth from a hutch that looks well-loved.

What works for you in a home office?
via LivingEtc.