Create a Healthy Workspace
A comfortable, healthy workspace is as important in a home office as it is in a company office. A properly designed and planned office will increase your productivity and make you more willing to sit in the room to finish your work.
The Chair and Desk
The chair and desk, often known as the workstation, need to be ergonomically correct and comfortable. This means it needs to provide good back support and must be positioned at the ideal height to encourage correct posture and positioning of the hands and wrists while typing. A good headset will reduce neck strain if you're often on the phone. Consider using some sort of foot rest as well to help you maintain the correct position while working, especially behind a computer.
Furniture Arrangement
Arrange your furniture so you need to move minimally to get to everything you need. This will reduce straining to reach items and prevent you from constantly getting up and down for a couple of steps to get something. Make sure your desk is large enough to hold everything you need. Wheels on your chair will make it easier to turn and get printed items or other supplies.
Lighting
Good lighting in your home office is crucial, but you need to be careful that you don't have too many light sources. Two or three light sources are sufficient. Natural light is ideal for daytime working. If you don't have room in your home for an office near a window, use a large enough main light fixture to lighten the entire room. Install bulbs that simulate daylight.
Task lighting is the second type of light source you should have in a healthy home office. Standard task lighting bulbs tend to be yellowish which can cause eye strain. Go for a bluish light instead which has a spectrum designed to more closely resemble to natural daylight.
Position lighting so that when you're working on your computer the monitor is the brightest source of light in the room. You don't want the monitor light to compete with other sources of light because it'll make reading the monitor too difficult causing eye strain. Just be careful not to have the lighting too dark around the computer otherwise you won't be able to easily see the keyboard.
Décor
Your home work environment should be soothing without creating the desire to sleep. Choose low VOC paints in soothing colors to increase productivity. Red, gold and orange can stimulate the senses and can be used as accent colors or on a wall or two. Unless you have a large home office, don't use these colors on all walls. Combine them with cool colors like blue, gray and green which are calming.
Creating a healthy home office is as much about making it a healthy place for your mind as it is about creating a healthy place for your body. Decorating your office with things that inspire can help keep you mentally healthy. The goal is to use only a few pieces to reduce clutter. If you have many things that inspire them, rotate them weekly or monthly.