The Best Desk Setup For Working From Home

Written By Sam Redmond

I wrote a little bit about my experience working from home earlier, but I left out one important detail: The Desk Setup. I’ve sure many of you have seen the plethora of YouTube videos on everyone's awesome desk setups, and today I’d like to share mine with you! What I really want to do is tell you about my desk setup, why I chose the things I did, and hopefully leave you with some tips that will help you design the optimal desk experience for yourself. If you like any of the things I’ve put into my set up I’ll leave links at the end.

The Before

What my workspace looked like before the upgrade

So before we get into parts and components I wanted to talk a little bit about what I was upgrading from. As you can see in the picture I had a small desk with a bunch of filing cabinets that were completely stuffed with as much junk as I could fit in them. To the left, I then had a wire rack with even more junk in it. There were wires everywhere, clutter all over my desk, and my neck always hurt from staring down at my screen. After about a year of working from home, I knew it was time for an upgrade.

The Desk

The desk I had has been in my family for something like 15 years. It served its purpose for a long time (and yes I am keeping it around) but I needed something bigger. Enter: the Autonomous Smart Desk Pro. I got the XL top which measures 70.5" x 30" and I got the matte black top with the white legs since it looks so good with my apartment.

Now for the important question: Why this desk? There are really 2 reasons:

  1. I needed a larger modern/minimalist desk
  2. I needed a standing desk

I know there is a lot of hype around standing desks some studies say that they’re good for you some say they don’t provide tangible health benefits and I’m saying I don’t care about any of that. The reason I bought a standing desk is that some days I do a lot of running around the house and sometimes it’s easier for me to stand at my desk for half an hour and then run off to my next thing. If there is one other thing I can say it’s good for it’s that sometimes I just feel like standing or moving around and being able to stand at my desk feels nice sometimes instead of sitting all day.

There were 2 things this desk didn’t come with that I really wanted.

  1. A cable tray
  2. A drawer

Fortunately, Autonomous has plenty of accessories for their desks as well as being flexible enough for you to be able to buy 3rd party accessories as well. The cable tray is great because I still have a giant mess of wires, but now I can keep those wires hidden and out of the way. I also have a small drawer to keep some pens, sticky notes, and other odds and ends I may use on a daily basis.

Now, you certainly don’t have to get a standing desk but if you do here is one thing I’ll leave you with. If you have a hard floor get yourself a yoga mat or something soft to stand on. You’ll thank me later.

Before we move on I wanted to talk about one last thing about this desk. I know it isn’t a cheap desk and it’s also the first desk I bought for myself well ever. Due to those reasons, I wanted to make sure I kept it nice for as long as possible which meant getting some kind of desk mat to put anything that might scratch the surface. This led me to get a leather desk mat because it looks really nice and it also protects my desk from any kind of liquid spills and stuff like that. Also if something happens to the desk mat I can easily replace it, where I can’t as easily replace the whole desktop.

The Monitors

Now I have 2 monitors but I wanted to talk about the big monitor first. It’s a 49" monitor and that, if I’m being honest, takes some getting used to at first. I’ve never really had new flashy monitors and let me just say the sharpness and color on this thing are really amazing. If you’re doing work like video/photo editing you’ll get a lot of really great colors coming through and it will really enhance your work experience in my opinion.

Now I’m a software engineer so I didn’t buy this thing for the sharp colors, I got it purely for the size. I needed to do a LOT of stuff all at once and my single 32" monitor was starting to not cut it so well. I had so many different pages and tabs open, I could only see a single thing at a time, and I had some difficulty keeping up with everything. So after buying this expensive new monitor did it really enhance my work life? In short hell yes. I still had several pages open and different screens I needed to get to but I could open relevant things side by side and I had the added benefit of having additional screen real estate up top as well. I can’t say that it increased my productivity but it certainly helped me keep my screen straight.

Monitor Arms

If you’ll notice in my pictures I’m also using monitor arms to hold my screens and you may not think they’re worth it but I assure you they are. I mentioned my neck hurting all the time from constantly looking down at my screen. Well, that’s the problem that the monitor arm solves for. It allows me to move the monitor to the correct height so that it perfectly matches my eye height from a comfortable sitting position. This helps you with your posture as you’re sitting (or standing) and reduces the strain on your neck. Remember your head weighs around 10 lbs (around 4.5 kgs) and when you’re sitting ALL day staring down it’s going to strain your neck and cause or worsen headaches. Do me a favor and get yourself a nice monitor arm, you deserve it.

I will leave you with a little wisdom on monitor arms, if you’re buying a heavy monitor make sure the arm is rated to carry the weight of your monitor. The WALI monitor arm I got for the Samsung monitor works spectacularly well. After tightening everything down it’s so easy to just move the monitor around it feels almost weightless. If you get a monitor arm that can’t handle your monitor’s weight you’re going to have a bad time.

The Keyboard and Mouse

Are you even a programmer if you don’t have an RGB mechanical keyboard? Yes, you certainly are, but it does seem like a lot of us go crazy for a nice mechanical keyboard myself included. In my old set up I had a thin laptop-style keyboard. I really liked that keyboard since it seemed like it was much faster for me to type. The downside of that faster typing was hitting the keys harder and harder. Since there is virtually no travel time in the key you may as well be tapping on a piece of wood all day which isn’t good for your fingers. I figured I would buy into the hype and grab myself a nice mechanical keyboard. Now I use a variety of Operating Systems from MacOS for work to Linux for personal projects and Windows for gaming.

For those reasons, I decided to go with the Keychron K8. They make some really quality keyboards that you can also customize A LOT. I decided on the K8 for several reasons:

  1. It is nice and sturdy with a really quality construction
  2. It looks really nice with the RGB lights and all (and multiple RGB settings)
  3. It’s customizable so I can swap out the switches and keys with whatever I want
  4. It has settings for Windows and Mac
  5. It can connect with up to 3 devices over Bluetooth as well as operating in full wired mode as well

If you’re looking for a keyboard, check out Keychron they have plenty of different kinds of keyboards for you to choose from! One downside of the K8 is that it is a tall keyboard. For this reason, I also got a wooden wrist rest for it so I’m not straining my wrists. Some people may think that a wooden wrist rest would be uncomfortable but those people would be dead wrong. The wood is actually really comfortable and it doesn’t squish or lose its form so it always keeps your wrists right where they should be.

We’ve been over the keyboard, so let’s move on to the mouse. I got the MX Ergo trackball mouse, which is a controversial choice. Some people love the trackball mouse some people hate it. I was on the fence about it, but it is by far the best mouse I have.

As you know I have a 49" inch monitor and to get from one side to the other you have to move a standard mouse quite a bit. My initial thought was that if I get a trackball mouse instead of having to constantly move and pick up a mouse I can just swipe the trackball once or twice. I’m happy to announce that I was on the money for that. Having larger monitors and multiple monitors the trackball is so much easier for moving my mouse around on all that screen real estate. The MX Ergo has the added benefit of also being able to tilt a little to more easily conform to how you naturally rest your wrist. One unfortunate thing about it is that if you’re a gamer the trackball is not great for gaming so you’ll definitely need another mouse.

The Chair

Let’s bring the whole thing together with a nice chair. You’ll want a chair that is customizable so you can fit it to your specific needs as well as one you find comfortable which can vary from person to person. I’m someone who runs very warm so instead of a leather-bound gaming chair, I wanted to grab a mesh back chair for the airflow. I also wanted something with lumbar support since I always have back pain after sitting for long periods of time.

The chair I settled on is made by a company called Oasis. I had never tried their chairs or other products before but the Amazon description seemed to have everything I wanted so I got it. At first, I found it somewhat uncomfortable since I wasn’t used to sitting in a chair properly. However, I found that I had a lot less back pain after sitting in this chair for long periods. I will say it took a few weeks of fussing with the chair to get it to the setting that I like especially for the adjustable lumbar support. However, once I got all my settings in order I have come to really love this chair. Another cool feature of this chair is that it has rollerblade wheels! Does that help with the ergonomics or comfort? Not even a little, but it is a whole lot of fun to roll around in. Another thing about the wheels is that they’re VERY quiet. You can’t hear me roll around unlike the traditional office chair wheels where it sounds like an entire army has come to storm your office.

The Cost: Is It Worth It?

So we’ve been over all the things that make up my desk setup. The last thing we have to cover is the cost. In total, I think everything cost me a little more than $2,000.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. I have been working from home for around 2 years now and I sit (and sometimes stand) at my desk for 8–12 hours a day on a workday and quite a few hours a day on weekends when I’m working on a personal project or playing some games. If you do the math I’m using this thing for around 2,500–3000 hours a year. The initial investment is a lot of money but that’s money I’m going to spend once and I’ll most likely keep this setup for years to come.

After upgrading my work environment I enjoy being at my desk, it looks great in my apartment, and it makes me happy. Not to mention all of the benefits I talked about during the article like having less wrist, back, and neck pain. For all of these reasons, I think that this setup was worth every cent I paid for it.

Just because it may be worth it to upgrade your setup, that doesn’t mean you should overpay for it. I purchased a lot of this stuff when it was on sale (I got the Autonomous desk on super sale). If you’re going to take the dive and do a complete upgrade I would recommend waiting until the end of the year to make your purchases. This is usually when companies tend to offer the biggest discounts and you’re going to get a better deal. You can also purchase small things throughout the year and do a gradual upgrade and then make your big purchases at the end of the year. Another thing you can do is ask your boss if your company has any programs that would help you pay for some of this stuff. I got my chair because my company (at the time) had a home office fund and gave employees up to $300 to purchase products that would help them work from home. If you’re nervous about asking about stuff like this, don’t be. The worst thing that’s going to happen is they’ll say they don’t have a fund like that.

Ultimately, the best desk setup is the one that makes you feel happy and comfortable. It’s something you get to customize for yourself and build your own environment. Hopefully, you can take some inspiration from my setup and create something unique and beautiful that you love as much I love my setup. If you have any questions feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Links

Here’s a list of all the components that go into my desk setup. Hopefully, you guys find some of this stuff helpful as well!

If you’ve enjoyed this article I’d love for you to join my mailing list where I send out additional tips & tricks!

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Sam Redmond
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