A workspace is essential whether you’re a student or an at-home worker. While you know you need the space set aside for work, the size of your studio apartment and the space requirements of most desks and other office furniture may seem absolutely bewildering.
How do you squeeze it all in? You may also ask yourself should I need to ditch all the other stuff in the studio apartment to make more room for the workpieces. If that’s the case, it’s time to stop stressing.
These design tips offer some quick answers and space-saving solutions with a simplicity that may surprise you. These interior design strategies may just make a positive impact on your mental health. As you incorporate your redesigned workspace ideas into your studio apartment, perhaps you’ll even rethink balance and overload.
Light up your space. Fill it with the things that inspire you and make you more productive and comfortable. You may find that you’ll never want to go back to the office ever again.
1. Utilize Double-Duty Furniture
A desk can serve as a nightstand, bookshelf, and storage space. Keep an eye out for multi-use desks and furniture, but keep your limited space in mind. You also incorporate a multi-use daybed, couch, or other furniture into your studio space, as well as furniture on casters for easy movement of the pieces, so you can re-use and manipulate the spaces as needed for work and play. Furniture that does double duty supports a more flexible working and living space in your studio apartment.
2. Take Advantage of Wall Space
Your small studio apartment can accommodate decorations and furnishings on and in the wall with a bit of creative design. Consider incorporating shelving, digital displays, storage-hiding artwork, and mirrors. With vaulted ceilings, some studio apartments even support a loft area for sleeping, working, and socializing. You may be pleasantly surprised by how much you can do with the walls with recessed lighting, cabinets, shelving, and strategic placement of storage-hiding art.
3. Divide and Conquer
For the smallest studio apartments, you may not have enough room to integrate a curtained or divider-based separation of your space.
If you have a bit more room, though, a curtain, bookshelf, or other partition can separate your workspace from other living areas. Depending on the design, modular sofas work in all spaces for dividing and redistributing the flow and usage of the room.
4. Organization Is Key
While your goal is to be purposeful with your limited space, you need to think about how you will maintain organization with your workplace efforts. It’s easy to let any desk become overwhelmed with books, dishes, papers, mail, and every manner of other stuff.
With your workspace and other living areas, there’s just no room for disorganization. Stackable cubes work well to keep the chaos and clutter in check, with the bonus that you can find stackable ones that may also serve as a room divider.
5. Lift the Bed
While you may have already considered all the ways to use the standard space of your studio apartment, you may not have considered how you can take advantage of the lifted-space options. Like you might use a bunk bed to accommodate the sleeping arrangements for multiple people, you can use lifted-space solutions to fit in that workspace that you need.
This idea is similar to the one that uses your wall space for shelving and storage. Here you could make more space anywhere in the apartment by lifting the bed or other furniture to create the perfect workspace underneath.
6. Make It Eco-Friendly
Sustainability can mean several things for integrating a workspace into your studio apartment. Of course, you can look for eco-friendly furniture, but you can also be strategic about the type of paperwork you need for your workflow. Even in a slightly larger studio apartment, you simply do not have the space to print out your emails and other documents.
Fortunately, with Docusign and cloud-based computing, you probably won’t need a file cabinet or other office equipment. All you need is your computer, a desk area, and a comfortable chair.
7. Reuse Your Space to Accommodate Your Work
You may find that you already have the solution to create your designated workspace, but it could take some modularization. Whether you’re a student or an online worker, you likely have a table in the kitchen or living area of your studio apartment. Think about ways that you can easily work on the table, and then transition it for meals or other functional use.
Since you’re probably using a laptop, it’s easy to set it up for study or work, and it’s just as easy to put it away. You can use a laptop stand, USB hub, docking station, and other modular accessories that can easily be stored out of the way when you’re not using them. Also, consider ergonomic solutions that will make your workspace efficient and comfortable.
