Welcome to Your Home Sweet Office

Some want Sommer to design home-office space that is connected to their master bedrooms. Offices replace the sitting room that some homes have traditionally attached to the master-bedroom suite. Some owners want smaller offices near the rear of their residences, usually on the first floor. Others want more of a separation and will ask builders to place their work-from-home space in a designated area of their new home's lower level, far from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the residence.

Sommer is involved in the entire process as homeowners make these decisions.

"We work with the homeowners on this right from the very beginning of the process," he said. "We get to stick our noses in right from the start. That's important if you want the home office to look like a natural part of the house, and not just as something you set up years after the home was designed."

Hiding the Evidence

The biggest challenge homeowners face with home offices is that they tend to get messy. Builders can help ease this problem by making it simple for owners to hide their office equipment when they are not using it.

This, actually, isn't much of a challenge, builders say. For instance, it's easy to design spaces to hide computers, even big, bulky ones, Sommer said. He will often design wood cabinets, ventilated of course, that hide the larger parts of a computer system. By drilling holes in the back, Sommer can run wires to the machines, so that visitors don't immediately see a rat's nest of computer, fax and copier wires. These same cabinets can hide fax machines, copiers and scanners. Sommer also designs deep drawers that homeowners can use as file cabinets, eliminating the need for space-chewing metal or stand-alone versions.

As technology has improved, and as computer monitors have become smaller and flatter, they no longer gobble up huge portions of a desk, making it easier for builders to incorporate them into a home's design. Smaller monitors also look neater and do not have to be hidden from view when they're not in use.

Sommer, though, is more frequently working with owners who have multiple monitors in their home offices. Several of his clients use traditional monitors for most of their daily work, but then rely on large-screen versions when making presentations to clients. In such situations, Sommer will often mount the second large-screen monitor in a home office's wall, where it looks like a flat-screen television. The owner would then sit at his desk and use his mouse to point at charts or information on his smaller on-desk monitor while his client would watch the same actions taking place on the wall-mounted screen.

"It's all about making the home office comfortable," Sommer said. "It's about hiding wires, the computers themselves, all the other equipment, so that the office looks like part of the home. This is something that a lot of my clients are interested in. Many of my clients are doctors and lawyers or successful businessmen. They do a lot of work from home, and spend a lot of time in their home offices. They want them to be comfortable and functional."

Rosenthal, too, is seeing a greater demand for integrated home offices that look as if they were planned from the beginning.

His company recently built a house in Potomac for a lawyer who logged long hours working from home. The key to making the office work, Rosenthal said, was the large number of built-ins that his crew installed.

The office includes a hidden cabinet that the owner swings out when he wants access to a shredder, hidden keyboard, printer and fax machine. The cabinet is made of the same wood and built by the same craftsmen as is the rest of the wood in the house. And that's just one custom-built hiding space. When visitors enter the office, all they see that is work-related is a monitor and telephone.

"We are a custom home builder, so we deal with a lot of higher-end clientele," Rosenthal said. "Most work very hard for their money. Many of them want the opportunity to come home, have dinner with their family and, if they have a suitable home office, go and finish their work."