More and more people are looking at working from home. Whether that involves telecommuting or actually running your own business from your house achieving success depends on a number of varied factors.

One of those factors is how you physically set up your home office and you would be surprised at how important the set up phase can be to the ultimate success of your business or telecommuting.

I have been working from home for eight years now and Stuart has been working from home for five years and in that time we have moved house several times and moved state once. That has certainly given us some experience in setting up a home office and we’ll share that experience with you right here.

So here are 10 points – five from me and five from Stuart – that we think are important considerations when setting up a home office. We didn’t intentionally set out to come up with different points; the fact that we did simply reflects that different people see different things as being important.

Here is my list of five things that will result in a good working home office.

1.    Desk position – I don’t like my back to the door and you should avoid placing your desk in such a way that direct sunlight falls across it.

2.    Make sure you have an ergonomic chair – it will undoubtedly cost more money but if you spend a lot of time at your desk it is very definitely a major investment in the future success of your business.

3.    Space for Shelving and Drawers – every office needs shelving and it needs drawers too. Unfortunately the style of office desk that most of us might choose will probably not have enough drawers so make sure there is space in the room you want to use for your office for more drawers.

4.    Heating and cooling – it’s vital that your office is warm enough to work in during winter and cool enough to work in during summer. Fans and heaters will be important so make sure that you can fit them in without having everything blow off the desk when the fan is on and scorching the furniture when the heater is on.

5.    Light and airy – gloom tends to lead to you feeling down. Our second home office was in a room that incorporated a lot of dark, heavy timberwork. Fortunately it also had big windows that let a lot of light in.

Certainly not pretty but it is functional. There are extra doors under the deks and a bookcase to the rigtht of the photo

Here is Stuarts list of five things that he thinks of as vital for a home office.

1.    Power Outlets – you can’t have too many power outlets and Murphy’s Law dictates that you will always have one less than you really need.

2.    Suitable desk or table – it’s nice to lash out and buy a fancy desk but you may not need that at all. Toni works from a very nice desk (that was a cow to assemble) while I work from a cheap table that we bought at a hardware store. It’s longer than a normal desk and I can fit all the junk on it I need.

3.    Phone lines – in today’s world of cordless phones you will still need at least one phone line in your home office – for the modem that allows you to connect to the Net.

4.    Location – your home office needs to be in a quiet part of the house away from all the noise that the kids will make. It’s hard to produce quality work when the kids are on the rampage.

5.    A good chair – it’s an investment in your future. The more uncomfortable you are the more your productivity will drop. You should also be prepared to replace that chair every 12 months … or even more frequently. Once you feel that your chair fits you like a glove then it’s time to ditch it and buy a new one.

So there are ten points to consider when setting up your home office. There are certainly others as well but they were the ones that were at the top of the list for us.