Customized Work At Home Offices On The Increase

Catering to the growing work at home trend world wide, this UK architectural firm designs customized work at home environments for the work at home crowd…

The growing trend in working from home finds people working in very strange places. InsideOut Buildings, who design and build bespoke home offices were very surprised by their survey into whereabouts in the house people have their offices.

“When we started our business we assumed that most people who work from home were working on the dining room table,” explains marketing director, Lynn Fotheringham of InsideOut Buildings who design and build bespoke offices in clients’ gardens. So Lynn set out on a mission to see if she was right, and discovered home office locations that proved that fact is indeed stranger than fiction. “We talked to a number of the home-based professionals of Britain and found them running their businesses from the following high-powered locations.”

1. The bedroom. One IT solutions provider who works in bed and has mastered typing lying down.

2. The utility room. Complete with rumbling tumble drier and whooshing washing machine. One graphic designer got so fed up with this she moved into her loft, where she is now driven mad by the heat and the pigeons on the roof.

3. The Loft. See hot and bothered previously, and many others who are toiling and boiling in their loft conversions.

4. The Hall. A popular choice that sounds civilized until you consider the potter who set up a pottery in the space under the stairs.

5. The Kitchen. A bookkeeper from Bicester finds marmalade a problem in her office and more famously Lynn Franks who runs her PR business from her kitchen table.

6. The Drifter. A consultant from Manchester moves from room to room with her wireless laptop, trailing her fax machine behind her. She finds her husband’s martial arts practice distracting when she works in the sitting room.

7. The garage. Some people convert their garage, which detracts from the value of their house - ask any estate agent. On the other hand Dell, eBay, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft all started in the garage.

8. The clock tower. Very few people work in clock towers, but one property developer did until he was driven out by owls nesting in the clock mechanism.

9. The Summerhouse. One consultant has to bring his computer into the house every night to stop it filling up with condensation. He is too cold in the winter and can’t use his office in the summer because of the heat – but it looks nice!

Inside Out Buildings have an alternative, the purpose built office in the garden. A well-designed, stylish workspace in your garden gives you privacy and comfort and adds value to your house. You can invite clients home without them having to enter your house or you can retreat alone into a cozy, highly insulated building.