Home office cabinets, built around your work

Custom home office cabinets vs. furniture-store desks

A freestanding desk with a bookcase beside it leaves gaps, wobbles and runs cables across the floor. Custom home office cabinets are built to the room’s measured walls, with the desk, storage and shelving drawn as one piece. Every section is sized to its job: a file drawer to your folders, a pull-out to your printer, a shelf span to what it will hold. We build them in our own factory for homes in Las Vegas and Southern California.

The navy office in our gallery shows the idea: closed base cabinets, lit oak shelving and a floating desk on one wall. The white oak office pairs a built-in desk with a tall storage tower.

Desk heights, depths and screens

Height. A writing and typing surface usually lands around 29 to 30 inches, but we check it against you, your chair and your keyboard. If two people share the desk, we discuss a middle height or a keyboard tray designed in for one of them.

Depth. For a laptop, 24 inches works. For one or two large monitors on stands, plan on about 30 inches so your eyes sit at a comfortable distance. Monitor arms need a top thick enough to clamp, or a reinforced section we build in.

Knee space. Pedestals and drawers under the desk eat leg room. We keep the knee opening wide enough to move a chair in and out, and drop pencil drawers if they hit your knees. A footrest or a lower section for a second user can be designed in.

Cables and power. Grommets in the top, a cable tray under the back edge and a chase down to the floor keep cords contained. Outlets and data lines are by your electrician. We mark their locations on our drawings so they land inside cabinets, not behind a fixed panel.

Storage that matches how you work

• Lateral file drawers. Wide drawers with hanging rails, on full-extension slides so the back folders are reachable.
• Printer pull-outs. A printer on a full-extension shelf slides out for paper and jams, then disappears. It needs an outlet in the cabinet and room for air.
• Closed vs. open storage. Closed doors and drawers below the desk hold paper, supplies and equipment. Open shelves above are for books and things you want to see. Most offices work best with the clutter low and closed.
• Hidden storage. Panel walls like our book-matched walnut example can conceal cabinets behind doors that read as paneling.

Video calls, conversions and lighting

Video-call backdrop. Whatever is behind your chair is what clients see. Open shelving with integrated LED lighting and a few objects at varied depths gives the frame depth. Avoid a window directly behind you, which turns you into a silhouette.

Spare bedrooms and lofts. A spare bedroom can take a full office wall, or just the old closet opening, which leaves the room usable for guests. Lofts often have low walls, sloped ceilings or railings, so cabinets get built to those heights and angles rather than forced into them.

Lighting. Light the work surface from above or beside the screen, not from behind it, to avoid glare. Under-shelf LEDs over the desk handle task light, and lit display shelves add ambient light for calls.

What it costs and how it gets built

Cost drivers. Total length and height, wood and finish, the number of drawers and pull-outs, integrated lighting and how much the room is out of square all move the price.

The process. A designer visits, measures the room and talks through your work. You get drawings and a fixed, itemized quote. Your office is then made in our factory and installed by our own crew. If the office shares a wall with a media center or library, see our built-ins and entertainment centers, and for a home office inside a closet, our custom closets page.