Ikea Home Office Design With Two L-shaped Desks, Cabinets And Storage Ideas
With so many people working from home these days, home office solutions are a high priority. I’m excited to share with you our Ikea home office design and layout. This space has provided us with a beautiful, functional and organized place to work and hopefully it will give you some inspiration and helpful ideas for your own space.
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When designing a large project, like a home office or kitchen, I highly recommend you use the free Ikea Planning Tool. This tool will give you insight about the design, layout, materials and budget for your project. Once you have an idea of your space (dimensions, outlet locations, plumbing, windows, etc.) you can take your plan to the Ikea Store and have one of their store associates help you make corrections, give insight and order your materials. Before making your trip to the store, be sure to schedule an appointment.
I’ve included a list of the materials we used to help.
LIST OF RESOURCES
Drawer/door fronts – Ikea Bodbyn in off-white
Counter tops – Ekbacken, Concrete Effect
Lighting Spotlights (Inside Glass Cabinets) – Ikea Omlopp
Lighting (Under Cabinet Lighting) – Ikea Omlopp
Office Chairs – Ikea Millberget
Bar Pulls (9 ¾”) – Lowe’s Brainerd Satin Nickel
Round knobs – Lowe’s Brainerd 10-Pack Satin Nickel
IKEA CABINETS AND COUTER-TOPS CREATE A BEAUTIFUL AND FUNCTIONAL SPACE
We chose the Ikea Sektion Cabinets because they were budget friendly, easy to assemble and install. I love the soft close hinges and the large drawers on the bottom for storage and organization.
The white Bodbyn Door/Drawer Fronts fit the style of our home perfectly and the Ekbacken Countertops (concrete effect) provide a nice contrast to the cabinets. They have a slightly textured surface for a more realistic appearance.
IKEA OFFICE DESIGN AND LAYOUT
I designed our home office to have two built-in work stations. The picture below is the desk on the left side. Both desks have a width of 64″. The tall counter along the back wall is standard kitchen height, which is 36″. The side desk counters drop down to a height of 30″. The two lower end cupboards (under the desks) are microwave cabinets that I added faux drawer fronts to. I love the extra storage they provide and they give me a spot to put odd shaped items, like my paper cutting mat.
The image below is the desk on the right side of the office. You can find the tutorial for the window trim here. Both desks are supported by cleats that are screwed into the wall studs and then held in place with corner braces. I also used the corner braces to attach the counter to the back side of the faux drawer fronts. The front of the desk is finished off with trim molding and painted to match the cabinets.
DESK OUTLETS AND CORD CONTROL
We added these outlets to all of the counter-tops in our office. Honestly, these are the best feature in our office redesign. You can’t have enough outlets and USB ports!
I highly recommend them. They have two USB ports for charging, two outlets and a decent size extension cord to plug into your wall outlets under your desk. We added them to each of the desks and to the back counter-top.
To install them, use a 3″ hole saw attached to a drill. Mark and tape the surface of the desk with masking tape. Then drill the hole from the top. When you’re about halfway through the counter, stop and finish the hole from the under side of the desk.
Place the outlet in the hole and plug in the extension cord under the desk.
We also added desk grommets for cord control to the opposite corner of the desks for our laptops. They are installed in a similar way.
OFFICE ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTION
The glass cabinet doors keep the dust out while maintaining an open airy feeling. I added some extra storage for my craft supplies with these Ikea Storage Boxes. They received a designer makeover in this post.
I keep my card-stock and paper behind the hidden doors in magazine holders.
The deep bottom drawers have a hidden smaller drawer inside. This is where I store my smaller craft supplies.
The other drawer houses our office supplies.
The bottom middle drawer is large enough to hide our printer.
The cabinets have helped us stay organized and definitely provide ample storage.
REMOVABLE WALLPAPER FOR THE BACK-SPLASH
I chose a grey medallion removable wallpaper for the space between the upper and lower cabinets. You can find the tutorial for applying it here. The wallpaper pattern I used is available on Amazon. This is not the peel & stick tiles. It’s actually an 18 inch by 9 foot roll of peel and stick wallpaper. The scale of the pattern and the height of the roll were designed to work perfectly as a back-splash.
To finish off the edges, I added a decorative cove molding around the perimeter and attached it with brad nails.
DIY OFFICE WALL ORGANIZER
Recently, I’ve updated my desk, utilizing the wall space for extra organization.
The file organizers, cork board and dry erase board keep my desk clutter free and organized. The top shelf provides extra space to store my binders and office decor. For the full DIY tutorial, you can visit this post.
BEFORE AND AFTER
When I took at the before pictures, I didn’t know they would be posted on my blog. I’m sorry for the grainy poor quality images. This project has transformed our work-from-home experience, and I’m so glad we did it!
I’ve since refinished the bookcases and you can find the tutorial here.
This is how the design looked on the Ikea Home Planning tool. This software really brought my design to life and gave me the confidence to move forward.
Here is the another after photo.
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Are you getting ready to renovate your home office? Tell me about your plans in the comments. Hopefully our Ikea Home Office design gave you some inspiration!
Lovely! Thank you so much for sharing. I do have a question…have you made any of those lovely drawers into hanging file space? If so, I’d love to know how! Again, bravo!!!
That’s a great question! Originally I planned to turn one of the drawers into a hanging file cabinet, but unfortunately the drawers have a 55 lb. weight limit. I didn’t want to risk damaging them, so I decided to purchase a small white two drawer file cabinet and slid it under one of the desks by the wall. It blends in well. We are making an effort to go paperless, but it will be a long time before we get there.
I love what you did/ Could you tell me where you purchased the wavery fabric?
Thank you for your kind words. I purchased the fabric at JoAnn Fabrics. I checked online for you and it doesn’t appear to be available any longer. You could check your local store.
Beautiful office! How did you mount the desk countertops with the microwave cabinets?? Thanks!
Thank you Heidi. We used “L” brackets or corner braces. We purchased the faux drawer fronts and attached them to the microwave cabinet. This allowed the desks to drop down to the normal desk height. The actual counter-top is resting on cleats on two walls (secured to studs) and then also secured to the microwave cabinet and faux drawer front with corner braces. We attached a faux trim piece to the front of the counter to make it look more finished.
Hi Laura,
I LOVE this set up and would like to do something similar, but much smaller – we only have an 8 x 8 space. Would you mind sharing me with more details from your Ikea planner?
Best,
Kathy
Hi Kathy. I sketched out the room with all of the measurements, outlets, windows and other obstacles. I knew I was looking for a symmetrical design, so I divided the wall space by 4 & 5 to see which cabinet dimensions would work best. Then I took all of that information to the Ikea planner and started working through my design. It’s a little bit of work, but the cost savings, storage and final product is well worth it. When Ikea is running their kitchen cabinet sale, sometimes the online planner is slow. I tried to work on the my design during non-peak hours. Once I had it pretty well finished, I took my design into the store and had the employees in the kitchen section help me with questions or changes. If you have more specific questions, you can email me at laura@heartfilledspaces.com. I will do my best to help.
Thank you!
You’re welcome.
Beautiful office! I love it and so creative! Did you have to mount the kitchen cabinets or are they free standing?
Hi Janet. The wall cabinets are mounted on a metal cleat that is attached to the studs in the wall. Ikea sells the mounting hardware/french cleats to go with the cabinets. I found it to be easy to install and very sturdy. On a side note, my husband I and installed some “big box” wall cabinets in our laundry room and they were extremely difficult to install. Ikea’s system was super easy compared to that project.
Hello Laura,
What a fantastic makeover! Thank you for the inspiration. Can you please share how deep have you kept the bench tops? Thank you
Hi Nisha. The countertops are approximately 25.5″ deep. The are the standard depth that the Ikea countertops come in. I hope this helps.
Hi Laura, your office is amazing. I am so inspired. Do you mind me asking what length is your back bench is ( on top of the draws) and what size are your draws.
Thank you
Hi Jacqueline. The countertop along the back wall is 11 foot 9 5/8 inches long. We used two countertops for this. One of the longer counters and one of the shorter ones. To give it a finished look, we taped the two ends that would be butted together with masking tape and cut the edges flat with a circular saw. This made the ends very flat and minimized any gap. I finished it off by caulking the crack with clear silicone caulk. The drawers measure 29 7/8 inches wide and 14 7/8 inches tall. There are 6 of these large drawers in the middle area. Each of the ends have a microwave cabinet (covered by the side desks) that serve as open bookcases.
Love what you have done. Doing something similar and we are unsure how much space to leave between the counter and the wall cabinet. What is your ceiling height? Are the wall cabinets 30 or 40 inches tall.
How many inches are between the counter and the bottom of the wall cabinet?
Hi Heidi. I’m glad you reached out. We have 9 foot ceilings. The upper wall cabinets are 40 inches. The distance from the top of the counter to the bottom of the upper cabinet (back of cabinet) is 18 inches. Keep in mind that there is a trim piece on the front of the upper cabinets that hangs lower to hide the lighting. Let me know if you have any other questions. Best wishes with your project!
Hi Laura,
We.re looking at turning a 12 ft high wall space into a storage wall/home office space. This is in the main living space as well, so we would like the work desk to be concealable when not in use…Small barn style sliding doors and retractable desktop. The wall is about 12 feet wide and we would like to cover the entire space with open display shelves (box style)?
Any ides?
Thanks,
Lisa
Hi Lisa. I like your vision for the project. You could use stock kitchen base cabinets and leave an opening in the middle, then add a cleat to the wall and cabinets for the desk. Some double sliding/overlapping barn doors would cover the opening. I also think leaving it open would be O.K., especially if you have an attractive chair. You could then add built-in bookshelves to the top of them. If it were me, I wouldn’t take them all the way to the top of a 12 foot celling. I would stop around 8 or 9 feet and add crown to the top. This is just preference, though. You will need a skilled carpenter to tackle this project for safety. It needs to be secured to the studs and there will be a lot of details, including adding some type of countertop and spacers. Walls are usually not square and floors are almost never level. I spent a lot of time with cabinet and wall dimensions before ordering our materials. Be sure to design the space to scale before you begin. I hope this helps!
Hi Laura,
Love your office plan and this helped me design mine as I wanted to use Ikea kitchen cabinets but didn’t want the 36″ desk height. Can you please explain the way you had your microwave cabinet setup….did you use two microwave cabinets, one on top of other or is it just one leveled to floor and the above is open till the countertop desk ? and did you use brackets to secure the drawer front to the microwave cabinet?
Thanks
Hi Anitha. I’m so glad this post helped you. We love our office and use it every day. The microwave cabinets we used are countertop height. Each one has a drawer on the bottom, then an opening for two shelves/microwave. We set the desk to the height we wanted and mounted it to the inside of the cabinet with (L) brackets. The desktop is also supported by cleats on the back wall and side wall. This left just enough space at the top of the cabinet to add a faux drawer front, to cover the opening in the cabinet. We also secured the faux drawer front with (L) brackets. There is one microwave cabinet on the left and one on the right, where the desks are located.
Thank you for your reply, I’m using this microwave cabinet `904.997.35` with 24*24*15 dimensions, so did you attach this(702.656.62) drawer part to the microwave cabinet ?
Hi Anitha. It’s been almost four years since we built our cabinets. If you are doing a custom build, I suggest you head over to Ikea and walk through your design with their kitchen design experts. They are very knowledgable and will look over your design to make sure you are ordering all of the correct pieces. It was a free service when we ordered ours. Bring the exact dimensions of your space, marking electrical outlets, windows, doors, cable outlets, etc. Call ahead to make an appointment or check for availability. With that said, we used the drawer that was suggested with the microwave cabinet. It was on the bottom only. The top (faux drawer) is just a drawer front to cover the opening. It is not functional. I hope this helps.
This is beautiful!! What is the name of the drawers at the bottom of the top cabinets? I don’t see it in the link. Is this an Ikea add on?
Hi Melissa. They are part of the Sektion/Maximera cabinet line at Ikea. I do love having the extra drawer space for my office. The only downside is they are up pretty high for me. I’m only 5′ 2″ and I ended up labeling the sides of the drawers, so I know what’s inside. My husband is 6′ 2″ and he has no problem viewing the contents of the drawers. I still wouldn’t change it, though. Having the extra storage space is really important to us. I hope this helps.