Home office design in Batumi apartments: desk, camera shot and quiet

What home office design decides

Home office design in Batumi apartments starts with your working day. How many hours you spend at the desk, how many monitors you use, whether there is a printer and paperwork, how often and at what time you have calls, and whether you work alone or with someone else. A home office for two calls a week and one for eight hours on video are designed differently.

Then we decide where the workspace will be and bring the desk, the chair, storage, the camera shot, lighting and sockets together on one plan. The work done from these sheets, from soundproofing to the network cable, is described on the page about home office renovation. This page is about what the designer decides before that.

Where to put the workspace: three scenarios

In the living room we separate the desk with a shelving unit, a glass partition or sliding door, and sometimes simply turning the desk round is enough. We choose by where the daylight comes from and what will be behind you. The kitchen, the way through to the bedroom and family members behind your chair will be in every call, so a wall or a shelving unit behind you is the better option.

Desk, chair and monitor: workspace dimensions

We work out the width and depth of the desk from the equipment, and the height from your height. Someone 170–180 cm tall usually finds a desk 72–75 cm high comfortable, and for anyone shorter or taller an adjustable desk works better. The top of the screen goes at eye level or slightly below, at arm's length, about 60–70 cm away.

Shelves above the desk are hung higher than the top edge of the monitor, usually 50–60 cm above the desktop, and more precisely according to the chosen screen model. A monitor bracket is fixed to the wall only if there is concrete or a backing board behind it. Under the desk we leave legroom with no drawer unit in the middle, plus a tray under the desktop for power supplies and spare lengths of cable. The drawer unit goes on castors so that it can be rolled out of the way for cleaning.

The camera shot for video calls

On a call your colleagues see part of the room behind you, and we design that part as carefully as the desk. A background in a calm colour of medium lightness, a shelf or shelving unit with a few objects, a picture without glass. A white wall makes your face look darker, because the camera adjusts to the bright background, and a strong colour gives your skin a tint.

The best background is a metre to a metre and a half behind the chair: this gives depth, and the camera doesn't pick up every unevenness in the wall. We try not to leave the door in shot, otherwise everyone who comes in ends up on screen. The camera should be at eye level, so a laptop on the desk needs a stand and a monitor needs a bracket at the right height.

Light on your face for evening calls

Light on the desktop and light on your face for the camera do different jobs. General lighting and downlights above the chair cast shadows under the eyes and a bright spot on the forehead. A face looks better in soft light from the front or from the side at an angle of 30–45 degrees, at roughly eye level: a wall light with a diffuser by the monitor works, and so does a light-coloured wall opposite that reflects light onto you.

Behind you we add soft light on the background, such as a lamp on a shelf or lighting in the shelving unit. It separates you from the wall, and the picture doesn't look flat. The desk light, face light and background light go on separate switches by the desk and have the same colour temperature, otherwise the camera gets confused by the different shades and your face comes out yellow one moment and bluish the next.

Storage: paperwork, equipment and supplies

We decide what to keep in the home office from a list: folders and documents, a printer and paper, a router or network storage drive, chargers, headphones, spare cables. Open shelves look good on camera but fill up with clutter within a week. We make most of the storage closed and leave one open shelf for the background.

The printer and router need air and a socket inside the cabinet. We draw a compartment for them with ventilation holes or without a back panel and bring the socket out right inside it. Drawers for small items are shallow: in a deep drawer everything piles up in layers, and the thing you need is always at the bottom.

Home office and guest room in one

The second bedroom in a 2+1 (two-bedroom) apartment often works as a home office all year round and becomes a guest room when relatives come to stay. We choose the bed by how often guests come. A sofa bed is simpler and cheaper, while a wall bed takes up less space in the daytime, so the office doesn't turn into a bedroom. A wall bed is fixed as the manufacturer's instructions require, usually to a concrete wall, and when it is open it needs a walkway of about 60–70 cm in front. We draw the desk so that it doesn't have to be moved.

By the bed we put a socket and a wall light, and in the wardrobe we set aside a shelf for guest bed linen and pillows. In an apartment for long-term rental we keep the workspace too: a desk against the wall, sockets above it and a light that won't disturb sleep if there is only one room.

Sockets, network and sound on the drawing

From the furniture plan we prepare a sheet for the electrician: sockets with their heights from the desktop, network points, light switches by the desk and by the door, and the place for the router or Wi-Fi access point. If the desk stands in the middle of the room, we show a floor box with its exact position, which has to be known before the screed is laid. On the plan the air conditioner goes away from the chair and from the desk with the papers. All these sheets are part of the working drawings from which the estimate is priced.

Sound is also solved on paper. If there are neighbours behind the wall, we mark that wall for lining, as described on the page about wall and ceiling soundproofing, and against echo we plan a rug, heavy curtains and, if needed, acoustic panels on the wall opposite the desk.

How much home office design costs in a Batumi apartment

A design for a home office or a work corner costs from 1,980 to 3,000 ₾. The price includes the measured survey, a desk position with the window to the side, 3D visualisation, drawings of the sockets, internet points and lighting, and the design of the wall that will be seen on video calls. The lower end of the range reflects our minimum order: the survey, site visits and set of sheets are almost the same for a room and for a corner of the living room.

In a whole-apartment design, the home office usually goes into the technical design project at 78–96 ₾ per m² of the apartment, with 3D of one room added for 660–960 ₾. Built-in furniture, combining the office with a guest room and workspaces for two raise the price of the design. Furniture and renovation are not part of the design price: a network socket with cable run costs 110–155 ₾ per point, and acoustic slat panels 83–110 ₾ per m² of material. The final cost is set after the measured survey and once the scope of the design is agreed.