| | | | | |

How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

When we first purchased our 70s house, we were excited to finally have a dedicated home office. Our previous home did not have one and it always felt like administrative items were spilling into our kitchen and other areas of the house. It took us several years before we transformed our fourth bedroom into our IKEA dual home office, but I am so glad we did! It has one hundred percent saved our sanity during quarantine! I am sure many of you are now considering home office options too, so I wanted to share ours as it is, 5 years later.
How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved UsThis post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my policies.

We added our IKEA dual home office in 2015 but up until then it was a very over looked space and we often kept the door closed. This is what it used to look like.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

So how did this save us during quarantine?

We have a home office

This seems obvious, but as a REALTOR I work with clients all the time who do not have a dedicated space for a home office because they do not work from home. As we have all learned, that can change pretty fast and even your kids might need a place for in home school. We were very lucky that we already had a home office set up and didn’t have to scramble to figure things out.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

Our space is set up as a dual home office

When I first started designing this room, we had no intention of it being a dual home office, but randomly realized it could be. At that time, neither of us actually worked from home, but we liked the idea of being able to share our small 100 square foot room. Little did we know, I would eventually work from home all the time and Barry would need to during quarantine. I don’t know what we would have done without our dual home office. We would have been fighting over the office or one of us would be set up in the dining room.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

Our house hasn’t been turned upside down

I can’t tell you how many friends I have seen on Facebook set up at their dining room table or on a folding card table because they do not have a home office. Different strokes for different folks, but for me my environment really drives my mood. If the house is a mess I feel stressed. If all my work is sprawled out everywhere, I feel disorganized and scatter brained. Having a place for everything I need to function for work is very important.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

We need monitors and keyboards

Call us old school if you like, but neither Barry or I like to work on our laptops. Maybe we are just used to that corporate environment or our eyes are getting old, haha, but working for days on end with a small screen and no full size keyboard sounds like torture! Luckily, we both have monitors and keyboards at home that dock with our laptops and we can both use two screens.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

Low distraction zone

I don’t know about you guys, but the struggle with distractions is real! Lets be honest. Our home office is actually somewhat separated from the rest of the house which helps a lot. All of the bedrooms are on our upper level except this one. It is at the end of the hallway by the garage so we are not distracted by snacks in the kitchen or the TV in the family room. We actually used to have a TV in here but we never turned it on because it was too much of a distraction, so we took it out last year. Having a low distraction zone has been really helpful in making it feel like an actual work day and allows us to get more accomplished.Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

Did we plan to ever share this office for two plus months? Nope. But we are so glad it was an option! Instead of scrambling to figure out how to work from home, we just walked downstairs everyday and turned on our computers. Now we may have worked many of these days in our pjs, but nonetheless, we went to work πŸ˜‰Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved UsGarrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved UsGarrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

Shop Our Office

Chairs | Pillow Covers (similar) | Lisa’s Monitor | Barry’s Monitor | Keyboard | Mouse | Rug (similar) | Lamps (similar) | Drawer Cabinet | Shelves | Filing Drawer | Countertop | Potted Grass | Succulent Planter | Agate Book End | Flooring

If you don’t already follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook, I would love for us to be friends! Plus, I am also sharing all the behind the scenes in my stories on our stock tank pool! We are making progress and I can’t wait to splash around on my lunch breaks πŸ™‚Garrison Street Design Studio - How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us

If you enjoyed How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us, please share it on Facebook or hover over an image and save to Pinterest!

Love new ideas and projects? Subscribe to receive DIY and design inspiration delivered straight to your inbox! Plus you will receive access to all my free printables, which are exclusively available to my awesome subscribers as my way of thanking you for your continued support!

How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved UsThis post, How Our Dual IKEA Home Office Saved Us, appeared first on Garrison Street Design Studio.

23 Comments

  1. Great setup! Thank you for sharing this…this will be my inspiration to get our home office setup. We’ve both been working from home since March.
    I have a question about your room…did you create anything with the closet area, or just leave it as a closet? I was considering putting some shelving in ours, maybe for a printer area, and more book storage in our home office.

    1. Thank you so much! The closet is still a closet. I have contemplated changing it, but half of it has a slanted ceiling which makes things a little more challenging. You could definitely take the doors off and create more open storage though.

      1. Awesome! Thank You so much for replying! Gonna start this asap! Thank You so much for sharing your idea. I absolutely love it!

    1. Thank you for sharing! Can you please link the shelf that’s in the corner under the bookcase shelf? Bottom right on window side??
      Many thanks!!

      1. Hi Vivian, unfortunately IKEA no longer sells that particular piece. It is 31.5 inches tall and the closest alternative is the IKEA Kallax. It is close in size, but would be just over an inch short of the other pieces. You could probably add some feet to the bottom to bring it up to size. Hope that helps πŸ˜‰

  2. Hi Again! Can you please tell us how you fused the two countertops together to make the Lshape? How do you keep it stable.?

    Also, where did you get the floating rectangular floating shelf above the desk? TYSM

    1. The left side of the desk has three IKEA legs under the desk supporting it and the two countertops are joined from underneath with a flat bracket. The other side is supported by the cabinet and shelves. The floating cabinet is Besta from IKEA. Hope that helps πŸ˜‰

  3. Great set-up! One question- where you get the shelf you are using for a base in the corner (used to store printer etc.)

    1. Thank you so much Maria! I am glad you like it πŸ˜‰ The whole setup is from IKEA. We have had it for several years now and unfortunately, IKEA no longer sells that piece. It was part of the Galant collection.

    1. I did link the items under “shop our office” close to the bottom of the post. They are also noted in the original post which I linked at the beginning πŸ˜‰

    1. There are two bookshelves and both are free standing. The one under the desk stays in place from the weight of the countertop and bookshelf above it but you could definitely secure the one on top to the wall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *