Home office setup

A good home office setup is rarely a room. For most people it is the end of a kitchen table, a laptop and a chair that was bought for dinners. That can work. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says home workers need to be able to sit comfortably, but “may not need office furniture or equipment at home to achieve this” (HSE). What tends to go wrong at home is less the furniture than the day around it: more sitting, fewer steps, and fewer natural reasons to stand up.

What changes when you work from home?

The clearest difference is movement. A review of 38 studies found that people sat about 31 minutes more during working hours and took about 2,560 fewer steps a day when working from home than on site. Most of the studies were done during the pandemic, which may have exaggerated the gap (Schöne et al., 2025). In a newer study of 163 hybrid office workers wearing activity monitors, people sat about 20 minutes more while working at home than at the office, and a larger share of sitting on home days went with more aches and pains (Parés-Salomón et al., 2026).

Furniture matters too, but in a particular way. A survey of 4,112 home workers in Japan found that about one in five worked at a low table, on a floor chair or cushion, or on other furniture unlike an office set-up. A table of the wrong size or height, a sofa, a floor cushion and a floor chair were each linked to neck, shoulder or low back pain (Du et al., 2022). In a German survey of 1,064 computer workers, longer remote working hours and poorer workstation set-ups went with more new pain (Casjens et al., 2025).

And yet, in a survey of 634 frequent computer users, working from home and working at a dining table were not linked to pain. How people sat was: leaning forward rather than sitting back against the backrest went with almost three times the odds of low back pain (Snodgrass et al., 2024). All of these are surveys, so they show links, not causes. The practical reading is that the table is not the problem; how you fit yourself to it is.

To see how the hours of sedentary behaviour add up over a year, try the sitting time calculator.

If you’re employed in the UK: what your employer should do

HSE’s display screen rules can apply at home if you work there long term or split your week between home and office. They cover people who use a screen daily for continuous periods of an hour or more (HSE). In that case:

• Your employer should carry out a workstation assessment. In most cases nobody needs to visit; you can do a self-assessment with suitable training, such as a checklist (HSE). HSE’s own workstation checklist is a good one to work through even if nobody asks you to.
• If the assessment shows you need something, such as a piece of equipment, “your workers cannot be charged for this” (HSE).
• Your employer must plan work so there are breaks or changes of activity (HSE).

Rules elsewhere differ, so check locally. If you’re the one organising this for a team, see Bavelu for teams.

How to make a kitchen table work

A dining table is a fixed height, so you fit yourself to it. Work through these in order:

1. Raise yourself to the table. HSE’s target is the keyboard “just below elbow height” with relaxed shoulders, and it suggests a cushion to raise your seat if needed (HSE). Hard dining chairs usually need one anyway.
2. Give your feet something to rest on. Once you’re higher, your feet may not reach the floor. NIOSH suggests a box or a book as a footrest (NIOSH).
3. Support your lower back. Most dining chairs have no lumbar support. OSHA suggests a rolled-up towel or a cushion in the small of your back (OSHA), and HSE suggests a cushion (HSE).
4. Separate the screen from the keyboard. Raise the laptop on a stand or books and use a separate keyboard and mouse, as HSE advises for prolonged laptop use (HSE). The details are in working on a laptop without straining your neck.
5. Set the screen. Top at about eye level, about an arm’s length away (HSE). See how to set up your monitor.

The desk and chair height calculator gives typical heights for your body, so you can see how far your table is from them. If you have an office chair, the chair set-up guide covers the adjustments.

Home office setup in a small space

A one-bedroom flat rarely has room for a desk you can leave set up. Some things still help:

• Use two heights. NIOSH suggests working standing up at a countertop from time to time as a break from sitting (NIOSH). A kitchen worktop can be your standing desk for calls or reading, as long as you raise the screen there too.
• Keep the legs clear. HSE says there should be space under the desk to move your legs, and room to change position, move, stretch and fidget (HSE INDG36; HSE CK1).
• Make set-up quick. If the keyboard, mouse, stand and cushion live in one box, you are more likely to use them than balance the laptop on your knees.
• Don’t let the sofa become the office. It is fine for a short email, but the evidence above is fairly consistent about long spells there. NIOSH notes that working for long periods at a kitchen table or on the sofa can be uncomfortable for many people, and suggests cushions for back support and an upright position if a soft seat is the only option (NIOSH).

Light, noise and temperature

NIOSH suggests finding a spot where noise, lighting and temperature can be well controlled, with less glare from outside light (NIOSH).

• Sit side-on to windows. OSHA recommends turning the workstation so bright windows are at right angles to the screen, and arranging blinds and furniture to let light into the room but not directly into your field of view (OSHA).
• Add a lamp, but shade it. OSHA advises lamps with shades or glare shields that direct light away from your line of sight (OSHA). HSE warns that lamps can cause glare by reflecting off walls or other surfaces (HSE CK1).
• Check the rest. HSE’s checklist also asks whether the air feels comfortable, the temperature is comfortable and noise is at a comfortable level (HSE CK1).

A routine: the part furniture can’t fix

At the office, meetings in other rooms, the kettle down the corridor and the walk to the station all break up sitting. At home, most of that disappears, and NIOSH notes that people working from home tend to spend more time in meetings and work longer days (NIOSH).

• Plan breaks, because they won’t happen by accident. HSE says short breaks often are better than longer ones less often: “5 to 10 minutes every hour is better than 20 minutes every 2 hours” (HSE). The UK’s Chartered Society of Physiotherapy suggests setting an alarm to remind you to get up and move (CSP).
• Take calls away from the desk. The CSP suggests it, and it is an easy way to stand for part of the day (CSP).
• Keep one proper break. NIOSH recommends at least one longer break, such as lunch (NIOSH).
• Replace the commute. Without one, the walk to the station or the bus stop disappears. A short walk at the start and end of the day puts some of it back.
• Set boundaries. NIOSH advises boundaries of time and space between work and home life, and a regular routine, including going to bed and getting up at the same times (NIOSH).

How often to move, and what the evidence says about it, is covered in microbreaks: how often to move during the workday. For a sense of scale, see how much of your year you spend sitting.

Home office on a budget: what to buy first

Spend in this order, starting with what fixes the biggest mismatch:

1. Free: a firm cushion to raise the seat, a box or books for your feet, a rolled towel for your lower back, and books to raise the screen.
2. A separate keyboard and mouse, if you work on a laptop. HSE’s checklist treats a keyboard separate from the screen as a requirement, unless the task makes it impracticable, such as genuinely portable work (HSE CK1).
3. A laptop stand or an external monitor. NIOSH prefers an external monitor where possible (NIOSH).
4. An adjustable chair, with seat height and backrest adjustment (HSE CK1). In one office trial, a highly adjustable chair combined with training reduced the build-up of symptoms over the workday at 12 months (Amick et al., 2003).
5. A sit-stand desk, last. It helps you sit less, but a Cochrane review found that the one trial of sit-stand desks it included showed no effect on arm and shoulder pain or discomfort (Hoe et al., 2018). The microbreaks guide has the details.

Skip gadgets that promise to fix your posture; do posture correctors work? explains why. If your back or neck already complains by the end of a home working day, lower back pain from sitting and neck pain from desk work cover the likely reasons and when to get checked.

Bavelu’s desk routines take two to four minutes, need no equipment and are designed and filmed by physiotherapists, so they fit a kitchen table between calls as well as they fit an office.