Smarten up your home office with a few handy gadgets

Many employers are now allowing their staff to work remotely for at least one day a week, which has proven to be an effective approach. When we were suddenly faced with having to create our own workspaces at home, many of us started off by setting ourselves up either at the kitchen worktop or at the dining table. After all, not everyone had a dedicated desk at home or even the space for one. If you’re one of those people who gave in after a while and bought a fairly cheap desk and office chair, you’re certainly not alone. Many home workers did exactly that after finding that working all day from the (dis)comfort of a kitchen chair or with a tiny laptop screen is simply not that productive.

But that only works to a certain extent. Our homes are simply not designed for working in: we don’t have the right kind of ventilation systems, for example, and you are bound to notice this after an hour or two as your eyes go dry and you start to feel tired. So what can you do about it? We’ve put together a few tips on how to use technology to make your home office fit for purpose:

What can you get to smarten up your home office?

Assuming you have already got a desk and an office chair, our top tip for you is to invest in a bigger computer monitor. Your employer might have a spare one you can use, or maybe they could contribute towards buying a new one. Why not get in touch with whoever is responsible and see what they say? Getting a larger screen is a good idea for lots of reasons: it will mean less strain on your eyes and give you a better overview of what you’re working on, which all adds up to a more efficient way of working!

How should you approach your home office lighting?

Think about what the lighting is like in your workspace. We tend to use white light towards the cooler end of the spectrum, because this helps boost our concentration. It might be worth looking into some kind of smart lighting that can provide different shades of white light depending on the time of day, but can also be dimmed if that’s what you need.

It’s a good idea to use a smart fitting for your ceiling light, or even just replace the bulb, and set up some kind of remote control so you can easily adjust your lighting without getting up from your desk. There are even solutions out there that can alter the brightness of your lights throughout the day to maximise your comfort. These adjust to the level of sunlight and are often referred to as adaptive lighting.

A smart speaker can offer a range of benefits

Having a smart speaker or voice assistant system on your desk is great for several reasons: for one thing, it will always be on hand to answer your questions or help you figure out anything you’re pondering over during the working day. But of course it can also easily be used to set a timer for meetings or to keep track of your tasks – just ask your smart voice assistant to set a reminder about something you need to get done.

And don’t forget you can use a smart speaker to listen to music too, which is a fantastic way to get you in a good mood and help improve your efficiency and well-being while you’re working.

Make working life easier with smart blinds or shutters

If you’ve invested in smart blinds or shutters before, why not make them part of your new home office setup too? When the sunlight gets in and glares off your laptop screen or monitor, that makes it much harder to see what you’re working on. A smart roller blind or motorised curtains will close automatically if the sun’s shining too brightly, making for a more pleasant working environment.

These handy sun shades will also keep the temperature down in your workspace, so you won’t get too hot and bothered either. Making your indoor climate more comfortable is a surefire way of giving yourself a productivity boost!

What’s the ventilation like in your home office?

Normal offices have rules to follow for maintaining the right working environment, but what about when you’re working from home? Is enough fresh air getting into your home office space? What can you do to improve the ventilation in there? These are good questions – and, thanks to smart technology, there are easy ways to resolve them.

An air quality monitor can measure the presence of various particles in a room and let you know when it’s time to let some air in or improve the ventilation in other ways. These monitors can automatically activate an air purifier when the air gets stale, for example, but even just notifying you that the air needs refreshing might be enough to make you do something about it – you could take the opportunity to stretch your legs and open a window while you’re at it to give the room a breath of fresh air. Poor air quality alone can hinder your concentration, so it’s worth thinking about how you can manage this.

If the air is dry – in other words, if the air quality monitor indicates that the humidity level is low – then a humidifier could help, and it could even do so automatically if you connect it to your air quality monitor.

There are lots of ways you can make your home office smarter. How far you choose to go is up to you, but if you really want to pull out all the stops, you could add a GaN charger to make sure your gadgets are always fully charged and ready to go. And as for cleaning up, why not get a robot vacuum cleaner to take care of that after you have finished work for the day? The possibilities are endless…