More than 50 million Americans work from home in some capacity, according to BlueSuitMom.com. Of that number, an estimated 13 million Americans work from home full time.

It’s a hard number to quantify — even the 2000 Census had difficulty — since “working from home” can mean a number of things: Self-employed small business owner, telecommuter, consultant or part-time employee. But the fact of the matter is that more people are indeed working from home. A survey by Builder Magazine found that 54 percent of households have home offices and 70 percent of households have home offices with personal computers.

If you find yourself spending more time in a home office, make sure you design it right.

Here are some basic considerations for setting up a home office.

Location, Location, Location

There are quite a few spaces in your house that can be turned into office space: A guest bedroom, a playroom, even a walk-in closet. Retailer Chase-Pitkin Home & Garden and the National Retail Hardware Association (NRHA) suggest dividing a home office into two or more spaces. For example, you may have a niche under a stairway you can use for a desk and a phone only. But just behind that niche might be a closet where you can put a file cabinet, copy machine and supplies.

There are quite a few spaces in your house that can be turned into office space: A guest bedroom, a playroom, even a walk-in closet.

Keep in mind two important considerations: Privacy and access. Your home office should be in a location where you can completely focus on your work — no interruptions from family members, no noise from children and away from distractions such as the television, radio and ringing home phone.

Access might be an issue if clients will be visiting you in your office. The space should be accessible so a client doesn’t have to walk through the entire house to get there (and you don’t have to clean up every time you expect someone). If you can’t find office space with a door nearby, you may want to consider adding a room on the ground level with a separate entrance for privacy.

The minute I walked into what would soon be my family’s new home, I saw the room that would be the office for Howling Beagle Communications, my marketing and public relations firm (www.howling-beagle.com). The master bedroom, located on the first floor, had a full bathroom, a closet for storage space, natural lighting and a door that closed it off from the rest of the house. Since most client meetings are held off site (I primarily use the office to write and make phone calls), additional design work wasn’t necessary. I only needed the services of an electrician to install extra phone jacks and a cable connection.

Building a Home Office

Peter Ericson, however, needed more than one room for his growing business. When Ericson, owner of The Complete Website (www.TheCompleteWebsite.com), first moved his company to Grantham, N.H., he used an extra bedroom and a loft in his Eastman condo as work space. But with two employees, five contractors and a growing client list, he knew that expansion was in his future.

Plans for his family’s new house included a walk-out basement with a separate entrance — a perfect space to work closely with clients to develop a complete e-strategy from Web design to e-mail marketing. Ericson now has 1,000 square feet that, when finished, can be used for an entry area, an office with one or two desks, two storage closets (one closet is large enough to be a second office) and a third office with enough room to include a conference table or sitting area to meet with clients and co-workers.

If it looks like construction may be in your future, here are a few considerations:

• When it comes time to resell the home, can it be presented as an extra bedroom to potential buyers? With the full bath in the basement, Ericson’s office space can easily be converted to a family play area or guest bedrooms by the new owners.
  
• To isolate your office equipment from home appliances, install a dedicated separate circuit with 20 amps of service. That way you don’t have to worry about someone in the house running the dishwasher and the microwave at the same time you’re trying to make copies and print documents. (Consult an electrician if you have questions.)
  
• Make way for telephone, fax and modem lines. You might want a cable connection in the office area for high-speed Internet service. “We’re wired to the hilt,” says Ericson, noting that there are extra Internet jacks and CAT5 wiring (a cable containing four twisted pairs of wires, a total of eight wires that could easily support four phones) in every room.
  
• Set aside room for storage space, cabinets, bookcases, files or a closet. The rule of thumb is four-drawer file cabinet per person, per year.

Whether you convert a room or build a space, make sure that it is indeed separate from the home so you can write off any expenses. The IRS Tax Code states that your use of the business part of your home must be “exclusive, regular, for your trade or business.” For more information refer to Publication 587 (Business Use of Your Home) at www.irs.gov.

Let the Light Shine In

One of the best office buildings I’ve seen is the Centerratech Office Building at Centerra Resource Park in Lebanon, N.H. Why? The natural lighting. Windows on all three wings (and all three floors) let natural light stream in, so much so that the fluorescent ceiling lights are not even necessary. With design by architects Metz, Thornton and Smith of Lyme, N.H., and construction managed by Trumbull-Nelson, this 58,000 square foot brick and glass building offers a pleasing work environment as well as addresses practical concerns such as energy efficiency and long-term maintenance.

Lighting will be one of the most important elements of your home office as well. There are two kinds of lighting. Ambient lighting covers the entire area, while task lighting is directed to a specific area. How much you’ll need depends on the task, but generally, the more visually demanding the task — such as proofreading a magazine for errors before it goes to press — the more lighting you’ll need.

Decide whether you want incandescent or fluorescent lighting in your office. Fluorescent light is more energy efficient than incandescent light, and the bulbs last longer. But if they remind you of a bad office experience where the fluorescent lights flickering all day gave you a headache and an eye twitch, incandescent light may be the better option. Incandescent light is warmer, and can be directed and controlled more easily.

What Goes in the Office?

This is the fun part — choosing the type of furniture you want and where it goes. First identify the office equipment you might need: Computer, printer, fax machine, answering machine, telephone/headset, copier, electronic organizer, to name a few. Then consider what all this technology will sit on — desk, printer table, file cabinet, supply closet and bookshelves.

Now, how do you make all this stuff into a functional office? The key will be to give yourself enough space to work; don’t jam in tons of furniture and equipment if you don’t need it. Make sure everything is ergonomic and the things you use daily — bookshelf, filing cabinet, phone — are within reach. If you have enough space, add a reading chair to provide a change of scene from the computer monitor.

IKEA, a home furnishings retailer, offers a software program that helps small business owners plan a home office. You can drag and drop tables and chairs into layouts, view them in 3-D, try different colors, print your design, and, of course, you can even see the total cost of your new IKEA office. Check it out at www.ikea.com by typing in “IKEA 2005 Office Planner” into their search tool.