Doing your homework

When I moved house 10 years ago, I was the only person in the street who worked from home. Today my homeworking neighbours include another journalist, a book editor, a translator, a violin maker, a solicitor, a textile designer and a stained-glass artist. The upside of this change is that the street is a more sociable place to live; on the downside there are now queues in the delicatessen at lunchtime.

Every year growing numbers of us are giving up commuting, canteens and office gossip in exchange for working from home. Recent research from The Henley Centre predicts that by 2006 more than 30 per cent of the UK workforce will be working from home some or all of the time.

It can be one of the best moves you'll make in life, taking control of your time, your workload and your work environment. But if you want to earn a living, working from home is no soft option. It requires discipline and self-sufficiency in working alone for days at a time.

One of the keys to getting it right is to make sure your home office is a welcoming and inspiring place where it is enjoyable to work. It doesn't need to take up a huge amount of space, but if you take your work seriously, then take your office seriously and don't think you can get away with perching on the edge of a table.

Of course, everyone's needs will be different, but in setting out to work from home there are five first steps to take:
Work out how much space you need to do your job efficiently.
Decide whether you have enough room or can make enough room to work at home.
Feel confident that you can earn a living and think hard about whether you will be happy working alone.
Calculate how much it will cost to set up a basic office.
With these basics in place, set to work collecting design ideas to create an office which suits you and your job.

Things to avoid include:
Messy offices without clear boundaries that literally spill over into your home life .
Using your home phone line for business calls.
Thinking that you can combine full-time working with child care. Both will suffer.
Spending large sums of money at the outset on equipment you may not need.
Backlogs of paperwork, especially tax-related records, which can spiral out of control, leaving you with serious financial debt.

Daniel Johnston, Barrister

After being based in busy and cramped law chambers, Daniel Johnston, a barrister, decided that to gain more space and peace he would bring his office home. A sunny spare bedroom with garden views has become his tranquil new workplace, pictured above. While the design is based on the traditional study, it is refreshingly removed from the stereotype of the barrister's cluttered chambers.

The challenge was to accommodate the huge volume of paperwork, which Formwork Architects has achieved by lining the room with cupboards and shelving. Built in a slender, birch-faced marine plywood, the bespoke units are based on a cube module the size of Johnston's files. Filing drawers wrapped round the base of the room are designed to accommodate foolscap-size documents. Nice details include the small recessed handle cut from the face of the drawer; there are no protruding handles to disturb the sheer face of the units.

The desk was found in a high-street furniture store, its colour an almost perfect match for the ply. Open shelves lighten the physical impact of the desk in its position against the window. Because Johnston prefers to keep the garden view uninterrupted, his desktop is kept clear except for a task light and an in-tray and is used only for writing. A separate computer bench is fitted at one side of the room.

Design by Formwork Architects (020 7266 5723).

Rosemary Fraser, writer

Most people use the shed at the bottom of their garden for tools or storage, but writer Rosemary Fraser wanted more than that: a place where she could read, think and write. Friends recommended architect Sarah Wigglesworth and the pair talked through dozens of ideas. No drawings were produced for weeks as client and architect surrounded themselves with piles of architecture books and magazines, and gradually the design (pictured left) emerged as a cross between a grown-up Wendy house and a garden shed.