You’re looking to decorate your home office with some high-quality, attractive, and useful furniture, but your budget doesn’t exactly allow for expensive…well, expensive anything. To avoid spending a lot on high-priced items, you’ve turned to IKEA. IKEA is a great place to get customizable furniture and make it look like the high-quality stuff you want. Try some of these IKEA Home Office Ideas to get an office you’ll love at a price you can afford.
1) DIY Glass Front Bookcases
Bookshelves are an obvious choice for an office, but you don’t necessarily just want open shelves. If you have a lot of work manuals and books you don’t read often, you don’t want to hire a maid just to keep them clean! With this article, you can learn how to add glass doors to your IKEA bookshelves to keep dust off them. The glass means you’ll still be able to read the titles and pick the books you want, so you won’t lose the convenience of having the books displayed on shelves.
2) Simple Table/Desk
A desk is the most fundamental part of your office, of course, but there are ways to make a better desk with IKEA furniture. This piece is just a simple table, rather than a desk with drawers and built-in shelves, and so on. The simple design means you can customize it however you want by combining multiple desks into the shape you prefer, building drawers in the sizes you want, and generally making it comfortable for your needs. You can even get a large or L-shaped desk this way but at a lower cost.
3) Plan Ahead
If you’re going to use IKEA to piece together an office, you may as well do it right. Part of what makes IKEA furniture work is the planning that goes into building the pieces you assemble. Plan out where you want a desk, cabinets, chairs, and other furniture, as Stefan the Illuminated Nerd does in this video. This ensures that you know exactly what to get when you go to IKEA to buy your furniture and begin laying it out and making modifications.
4) Markus Chairs
One of the hardest things to find when you’re trying to stay under budget is comfortable chairs. In most cases, if you want a good office chair, you have to pay the price. When it comes to IKEA office chairs, nothing beats the Markus. This chair has adjustable height and tilt and can roll and swivel, giving it all the features of a typical office chair, but at a lower price than most high-end seats. Since it’s full-height, you’ll have plenty of back support, which is often a big issue with less expensive chairs.
5) Pegboard Organization
One of the neatest IKEA ideas for a home office is a pegboard. People use them all the time to store tools in garages, so why can’t you use them to store things in your home office? You can get a SKÅDIS pegboard from IKEA, and outfit it with any shelves and containers you need. Just look for items like this shelf that are labeled “SKÅDIS.” These shelves and holders are neat, because, unlike most hangings and shelves, you can rearrange them on a whim.
6) DIY Built-In Bookcase and Storage
Built-In bookcases are sturdier overall than freestanding ones, making them great for an office where they might get filled with heavy reference books, or even with your hardbound Lord of the Rings collection. You can use this article from the Avery Street Design Blog to turn IKEA bookcases into built-in bookshelves and storage. In this case, the designer decided to make cabinets underneath, and glass-front cabinets above, but you can choose any size and combination that works for your office. You can even build drawers into the bookcases for better office storage.
7) Drawer Organizer
Once you have all your furniture picked out, laid out, and built, you can add any drawers and doors you need to make a customized office. When you get to smaller partitions like drawer and shelf organization, you don’t want to build those in. After all, what happens if you change your mind? Instead, get drawer organizers like these to organize your office drawers however you want. Unlike, built-in organization, these can be switched around as much as you want.
8) Wall Magazine Rack
While people probably aren’t stopping by your home office to leave documents, you’ll have plenty of times when you don’t have time to file something and need a catch-all file folder. Wall magazine racks like this KVISSLE rack are a great way to organize your inbox. You can even lay it down in a drawer to act as a drawer organizer if you want. When your home becomes your workplace, a catch-all like this that you can hang outside of your office is a great way to separate work and home. If you’re not working, you’re not filing things.
9) Floor Lamp
While your office probably has overhead lighting, you’ll want smaller lights in areas where you need better lighting. Placing several lamps around the room can help with this in a large office. Lamps like this one are also a healthier light source than overhead lights because they mimic natural lighting and make it easier to focus on work. This lamp is tall enough to be above any work surface, so you’ll still have overhead lighting when you need it.
10) Footrest
Working in an office all day is tiring, but when you’re at work, you have to stick it out. Stand up to take breaks when you can, and stretch your legs under the desk as often as you need. Since you’re working on a home office now, you’re in charge of your comfort. A footrest like IKEA’s DAGOTTO can make your office a much more comfortable place to work. Also, if you’re too short for your chair and desk to be comfortable, getting a footrest like this is easier and cheaper than getting a customized desk.
11) IDÅSEN Drawers With Smart Lock
If you handle sensitive documents or merely want to get more organized, you’ll need a filing cabinet of some sort. Typical metal filing cabinets work, but they have sharp edges you can hit, and they’re hard to move. This IDÅSEN drawer unit has a Smart Lock, so you can lock it just like you’d a file cabinet drawer, but the cabinet has a more rounded design without any sharp corners. It’s also on wheels, and it should fit under a desk, so you can put it anywhere and move it as needed.
12) T Shape
Since IKEA desks are often simple, with a design similar to a table and few, if any, drawers, you can take advantage of this design. Instead of building them as they’re designed, use the part to create your own customized desk, like this T-shaped desk. The T-shaped desk is a great way to create home workstations if both you and your spouse are working from home, and you can use this article by Freya MacLean as a guide to creating the T shape.
13) Smart Lock
If you work from home, or even if you just use your home office for taxes, you probably have a few sensitive documents of expensive items you’d rather keep under lock and key. These Rothult Smart Locks allow you to lock any drawer you choose, and they come with keycards, so you probably don’t have to worry about somebody bumping the lock with a screwdriver. The keycards also give a sleek look to your newly upgraded office.
14) DIY Giant Desk
If you can’t find a big enough desk, there’s an easy do-it-yourself solution. Build a large desk using several pieces of IKEA furniture. In this video, a do-it-yourselfer from TheSorryLife shows you how she made a customized desk that spanned the length of her office using IKEA furniture. When you build a customized desk like this, you can choose what shelves and cabinets you want, and change the shape and size to fit your needs. Think about what your needs are and plan ahead to build your giant IKEA hack desk.
15) Desk Organizer
Your organization is one of the most significant factors in making your office functional and keeping it looking tidy. Make sure you start off on the right foot with all the organizers you need. The desk organizer is probably the most valuable organizer because it holds all the things you need immediate access to. You can get this KVISSLE desk organizer from IKEA to help you keep things organized, and since it has a handle, you can move it out of the way if you need extra desk space for a minute.
16) Hang Papers
People use clips around the house a lot. They use them to hang clothes on clotheslines, hang notes on refrigerators, hold together bags and files, and for many more reasons. You can use clips like these pegboard clips from IKEA to hang notes, calendars, and other papers so you won’t forget them. If you want something more substantial, try hanging a clipboard on your pegboard and using it as an extra writing space, if you have a clipboard that you can hang up.
17) Clamp Lamp
Desk lamps are an important part of your office, but IKEA furniture makes it easy to customize, so why not customize your desk lamps, too? This desk lamp is actually attached to a clamp instead of a base. This way, you can clamp it to any surface and have a convenient light at whatever angle you like. It’s great if the overhead lights aren’t in the right spot, but you still want your work area lit from above.
What’re you looking for in a home office? Which of these IKE ideas sounded good to you? Tell us in the comments below!