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Proper Home Office Setup

Posted Updated
By Chris Henk
16 min read
Proper Home Office Setup

If you work remote, hybrid, or otherwise sit in front of the computer for long periods of time at home, you need to properly invest in your setup.

A proper setup increases comfort, satisfaction, productivity, and health. I’ll never forget the first time I used a $1200 office chair at my Citi Bank internship. It took a good chunk of time to fully adjust there were so many options. It was more adjustable than a car. Over time, I noticed I could spend 6 or even 8 hours a day in the chair at work and feel fine. Still fresh, still limber, never any back pain.

From this point on I was hooked and I’ve slowly upgraded every part of my office setup.

How to Start; What to Consider

Start with the items under The Core. These are elements there’s no excuse for, you need to get them right. The rest is just optimization. When considering items, look for value. You want business oriented products, they are generally better. They care more about ergonomics and will be built stronger.

But, don’t pay business prices either. Consider value oriented items from companies targeting the home office market, used items, and modular items. For example, the desk I recommend has a perfectly reasonable desk surface. But it’s nothing particularly special either. If you have a surface lying around, find a better one, or just a cheaper one, you can buy just the legs / frame and mount your own desktop surface to it.

The Core

The core of any setup is the desk and chair. Before you select them, get familiar with what proper erognomics are. The short version is your legs should rest comfortabley on the floor at a 90 degree angle, with thighs supported. You back and shoulders should be upright and supported. Your eyes should be level with the center of the screen. If you’re looking up or down, the height is wrong. As an aside, this is why a laptop should never be used at a desk by itself for more than 10 or 15 minutes tops.

Consider there is more than one correct setup. For instance, I prefer to sit with my chair pulled up very close to the desk and the desk height low enough that it serves partially as an armrest and keeps my wrists level. This just means I need to bump my screens up higher.

Desk

Get a sit-stand desk. They’re affordable, and maximally flexible. Even if you don’t want a standing desk, having an adjustable height desk means you can dial in the ergonomics precisely and do other tasks. Trying to repair something? Move your keyboard and adjust the height to get a comfortable work surface. Additionally, I do think you’ll find standing on occasion is nice. Especially for long meetings where it’s nice to be able to move around a bit and you’re probably not typing much anyway.

There are plenty out there, this is the one I’ve had for the last 6 years: Autonomous SmartDesk Pro.

There is a cheaper one that’s better for most people. I just have a lot of monitors and a heavy computer on it, so I prefered the dual motor version because of that weight: Autonomous SmartDesk Core.

Chair

Get a real business chair. They’re so much better. However, just because you should get a thousand dollar chair doesn’t mean you should pay a thousand dollars for it. The best option is to find the local sell off of equipement from a failed business near you. If that doesn’t exist, or seems like to much work, there are retailers that sell refurbished models that are indistinguishable from the new model for half or even a quarter the price.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are two classics. You can’t go wrong with other. The Aeron is highly renouned, and ideal if you’re above 6ft tall. If you’re a normal height, I think the Leap V2 is a serriously underrated option. It isn’t mesh based and is a bit cheaper. It’s what I have personally.

Example from a refurbished reseller:

The Conditional Core

I’ll confess, I used to consider this optional. Then I started having issues with plantar fasciitis because of increased walking, shoes well past end of life, and increased work from home. Here’s something that might not be obvious at first. If you work out of the home, you spend most of the time standing or walking with soft support for your feet. If you’re working from home, this might not be the case. You’re standing and walking in your bare feet, often on hard surfaces. No wonder my feet were hurting more.

Next, I recognize it looks goofy and gimmicky with the hump in the middle. But I will say it does actually promote more movement and this does help with foot fatigue. Additionally, it makes it really easy to move it in or out of place as you switch between sitting and standing.

Standing desk owners, listen up! Even if you wear house shoes, even if you wear slippers, having a standing mat makes so much more of a difference than you can imagine. GET ONE. Don’t be stupid, learn from my mistakes.

Computing

If you need a desktop, you know who you are already. If you’re not sure, then you can get away with a docked laptop. A docked laptop only experience is very nice. It saves money, and means when you switch locations you come back to exactly where you left off. Even compute heavy work like programming is pretty laptop friendly these days (how often do you full build vs incremental build?). If you need the desktop, I’d build it yourself or use a botique builder such as Puget Systems or System 76. You’re already paying the markup, why not get something better for your money?

If Your Primary Device is a Laptop

If you do work on your laptop, you need to start docking it. You’ll be more productive and laptops are designed for portability not for long term use. It’s bad for your neck, shoulders, eyes, and back to be hunched over one all day.

Even if you’re a casual laptop user, you should still consider docking. It’s a much better experience and if you’re only interested in using a single external monitor, it’s super cheap to do now. If you have a desktop and a laptop you’d like to dock, read the KVM section below.

However, if all you want is your real keyboard and a single real monitor, this will work for you too. Just be sure to throw in an integrated usb hub + switch from the section below. Combine that with a basic hub, and you can dock your laptop with 2 button clicks + 1 wire for under $100.

The key to docking a laptop is trying to get down to a single wire experience. I highly recommend this Anker hub. It is indeed a hub, so you can bring it with you if you need to travel or need to do something odd with a type of connection your laptop doesn’t support. However, where this comes in handy is it’s dual purpose. The one in my home is almost always acting as a dock. It supports power in, ethernet, usb, sd card, and an HDMI display out.

This works perfectly for my girlfriend, who docks her laptop with a monitor for the second display + a keyboard and ethernet.

Input Devices

Get. A. Real. Keyboard. Don’t type on a laptop. There’s no excuse for this and it’s strictly inferior. If you’re not doing a ton of data entry, I recommend getting a 10-keyless model. This leaves more space for your mouse and thus better ergonomics. Even if you do data entry, consider getting the smaller keyboard and a seperate numeric keypad you slide down only for data entry tasks.

External keyboards with low profile laptop style keys are popular. Especially since the typing experience feels similar to your laptop. I don’t personally care for them, and use a mechanical keyboard instead. If you want to try mechanical but don’t want to go down the huge rabbit whole, give “brown” switches a go. They’re perfect for office work and won’t make as much noise. I prefer Cherry MX brand ones, but other companies have really stepped up their game over the years.

Get a full size, ergonomic mouse. The magic mouse is an abomination. Using portable laptop style mice at a desk makes no sense.

My personal favorite is the Logitech MX Master Series. There are many options, but be sure you get the one that’s meant for your operating system. They’ll work with any, but pairing properly can let some bonus features work better.

Monitor Layouts

When selecting a monitor, don’t only look at the resolution. Consider:

  1. Resolution
    • If your monitor is at least 27”, then get a resolution of at least 2560x1440p. 1080p is noticably worse at this size. 4K is fine, but overkill so just don’t pay a bunch extra for it.
    • 24” at 1080p is very similar to 1440p at 27”, and can pair well together.
  2. Stand must be adjustable
  3. The panel type (If you’re unfamiliar just pick IPS. It’s high quality with good viewing angles meaning the screen looks the same from an angle as it does sitting directly in front of it)
  4. The refresh rate
  5. The input type. Both display port + HDMI is best, if only one just make sure it matches what your computer outputs.

For number of screens, the right number is almost always 2. 1 is wrong unless you literally don’t have the space. 3 is getting into diminishing returns and can get unweidly. I’ve tried many, many combinations over the years but have settled on portrait 27” screen + a 1440p 34” ultrawide.

If you’re using a desktop, consider:

  1. Single Ultrawide, which can effectively be two screens.
  2. Portrait + Ultrawide in Landscape
  3. 2 Normal Landscape Screens
  4. Portrait + Landscape + Portrait

If docking your laptop but using the laptop screen as well (elevated, remember from before!):

  1. Single Landscape
  2. Single Ultrawide

My recommended monitors:

  • 27”
  • 24”. This has a higher than normal refresh rate which is nice, but warning it can’t tilt portrait like my older model can. Consider finding model with equivalent specs but a better stand than this one.
  • Ultrawide. This has a really high refresh rate that you don’t need if you don’t game. That said, the higher resolution ones usually also have all the other features since the price is already high. I’d recommend waiting for a black friday sale. An expensive monitor is worth it they’ll last 5-10 years and you use it almost everyday. But I get that this is a really steep price.

Fine Tuning with Accessories

You may notice that I haven’t mentioned monitor arms, and that’s no mistake. I find that, in general, monitor arms aren’t what you imagine them to be. Unless you get really expensive ones, they’re finicky as hell. They sag, move around, and you can never get them quite right. They add weight, and even the cheaper ones are a sizable cost.

Almost everyone has their monitor too low and should address that. Either get (or make!) a small shelf to boost the height. Another option (that I use) is to take old thick books and stack them under your monitor. The shelf looks better, but the books work just as well.

Consider a desk pad / mat. It will protec the desk, keep the keyboard in place, and works as a giant mouse pad. More premium options exist as well.

Travel

Get a high power portable charger. It’s a majorly underrated way to improve travel experience. They’re tiny, charge faster, charge multiple devices at once, and can replace every single charger you need, including for your laptop.

  • For most cases, get the smaller 65W Anker charger
  • If you have a power hungry laptop, get the larger 120W Anker charger
    • It’s worth noting this probably isn’t needed even if your laptop is very high power draw. I have the older 65W model, which means my laptop can actually outpace it. However, this just means it goes steady state instead of charging during maximum sustained usage. Unless you’re doing something like video rendering, you’re probably fine.
    • The other consideration is this model will fast charge faster for some laptops. Consider what the wattage of the factory charger is, and how badly you need that full performance. For me, this didn’t exist when I bought my 65W one and I haven’t been compelled to upgrade. Yes, it fast charges slower but it’s still charging fast and my laptop battery lasts 12+ hours so I’m never desperate to get an instant full charge in.

Working With Multiple Setups

If you have multiple computers you regularly use at your desk, it’s worth having a reasonable way to switch between them. If it’s infrequent, you can just move wires over as needed or use your laptop with it’s own keyboard instead of your better one.

For the rest of us though, we need some sort of KVM. A device that sits between your monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc and connects to every computer. It also has buttons to switch which computer to forward signals to. In this way, you’re “unplugging” and moving over to the other computer, but it’s all the devices with a single button press.

The Poor Man’s KVM

In college, I wasn’t going to be dropping hundreds of dollars on a KVM, plus back in 2014 it was really hard to even find ones that supported high resolution displays, most were marketed towards server customers.

The Original Setup

I wrote this before finding current product links. Turns out, the world has come a long way in 10 years, go figure! I’ll keep the original instructions for posterity + as an option if you have some or all the components laying around. However, if you’re starting from scratch go with the integrated product that combines usb hub + switch.

Thus, I employed the compromise solution. It consisted of:

Then, wire everything by:

  1. Connecting all displays to the main computer.
  2. Connect one or all displays to secondary computer.
  3. Take the usb switch and connect each output to a computer.
  4. Take the usb hub, and connect it to the input of the usb switch.
  5. Connect all usb devices to the usb hub.

If the secondary computer is a laptop, ideally get a dock or hub to reduce the number of cables. If you can’t, just have a wire connected to each device as mentioned above but with the other end resting where the laptop sits for easy access.

Now, to switch computers you just toggle the usb switch to connect everything except displays, and then change the active display input. Newer monitors may even detect the new input and switch automatically, in which case it truly will be a 1 button experience.

In this way, I nearly got the KVM experience at nearly no cost. It was a few extra clicks, and I had to plug multiple cables into my laptop, but this was worth it. I couldn’t find or afford what I wanted in the KVM market at the time, and usually I wasn’t docking the laptop anyway.

Recommended Selections:

The High End KVM

If you’re a gamer or otherwise require a more advanced display with higher resolution, refresh rate, or adaptive refresh rates, look no further than the Level One Techs KVM. This is a niche product from a small software consultant business that also runs a YouTube tech channel.

The developers and community behind it are extremely invested. It’s a niche product offering a specialized feature set, so it’s priced accordingly (though not outlandish). If you’re looking for the best, look no further.

They have other products as well in this vein, but if you’re the kind of person that is looking for them you’ll be finding them on your own no problem.

A General KVM

These are single display offerings from a more mainstream brand I do have experience with:

Dual screen is getting more specialty, so you’ll see niche players. I can’t personally vouch for them because they don’t match my needs, but they do exist:

Feel free to give feedback if you try any and I’ll give accordingly. I’m considering giving display port 2 a go.

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