Setting Up a Small Office: The Essential Furniture Checklist

A good workspace is not about filling a room. It is about getting a handful of things right — the seat you spend eight hours in, a surface at the correct height, and somewhere sensible to put your paperwork. Everything after that is decoration.

If you are furnishing a home office or a small commercial space from scratch, work through this list in order. It is deliberately short.

1. The chair comes first

This is the one place where spending more genuinely pays off. You are in contact with your chair for the entire working day, and a poor one shows up as lower-back ache within a fortnight.

Look for adjustable seat height, back support that meets the natural curve of your spine, and a base that rolls freely on your floor type. If several people share the desk, prioritise adjustability over everything else. Our ergonomic grey mesh chair with lumbar support and footrest covers most of these bases; for a more formal room, the executive faux leather chair is the warmer-looking option.

2. A desk at the right height

Standard desks sit around 73–76 cm high, which suits most adults of average height. The test is simple: sit down, rest your hands on the surface, and check that your forearms are roughly parallel to the floor and your shoulders are relaxed rather than hunched up.

If the desk is too tall and you cannot change it, raise the chair and add a footrest. If it is too low, that is harder to fix — measure before you buy.

3. Storage you can move

Fixed storage locks your layout in place. Mobile storage does not. A mobile cabinet with drawers and open shelves can sit under the desk while you work and roll out when you need the floor space, which matters enormously in a small room.

4. Somewhere for the printer

Printers are heavy, awkward, and they eat desk space. Moving yours onto a dedicated printer cart with filing drawers frees up your main surface and puts your paper and files in the same place as the machine that uses them.

5. A second seat

Even a one-person office benefits from a spare chair — for a visitor, or simply to move to when you want a change of position. A compact armless task chair tucks away neatly and does not dominate the room.

What you can skip for now

• Bookcases — most paperwork ends up digital. Wait until you know what you actually need to shelve.
• A second desk — reconsider only once the first one is genuinely full.
• Decorative furniture — buy it when the working setup is finished, not before.

Get the chair, the desk height and the storage right, and the rest of the room falls into place on its own. Browse our office furniture range to see what fits your space.