How big your office desk should be

A recent British survey amongst 1000 office workers revealed that people spend an average of 6.4 hours a day in bed. The time spent at desks, however, surpassed that, at an average of 6.8 hours — so there is a good chance your desk is actually the primary location of your life. Depressing news — but let’s try and turn this into a good thing.

People often rave about the results they experience from finally replacing their old bed with a quality mattress of fitting dimensions. Likewise, there is a lot to gain from taking a stance on the size and design of your desk.

For many years, a desk measuring 160cm x 80cm was the overriding norm — a surface so big you can cover it with 20 MacBook Pros. That’s 72 bags of Haribo Gummy Bears, by the way. Or space enough for your laptop to take up 40cm at one end, a paper tray to take up 30cm at the other end — while still leaving you with an oceanic 90cm of sumptuous give-in-to-that-power-nap zone in the center.

At OMNI, we are work romantics — firm believers in everything grand, including those bold gestures towards the uncharted land in front of you. Release your inner Einstein or Picasso: project, try, err, try again — and so on and so forth. That is why we could not help but indulge in the 160cm x 80cm limo of a desk, especially for those who have plenty of room to play with. Anything larger, like 180cm or wider, is simply crossing over to the inexpedient.

With that said, we must admit that we have become quite fond of prioritizing spatial breathing room in the office, and this is something that can be well-achieved by introducing slightly smaller desks. We didn’t want it to feel like a compromise, so we went on to do a rather comprehensive desk test and produced several size variations in order to arrive at the right dimensions, which could provide the same sense of space, yet was able to offer more spatial flexibility.

Fast forward to the results of our tests, we found that the 120cm x 70cm was simply a bit too small when committing to an office desk long term. The 120cm x 80cm felt like a desk-version of a revamped VW Beetle, which might be cute, but a bit awkward. Now, the 140cm x 70cm (or even 80cm for larger monitors) turned out to be just right.

Shaving off the 10cm on each side of the 160cm x 80cm resulted in the best of both worlds. This size has turned out to become quite a favorite amongst urban startups.

As far as desk height, we saw no reason to make any limitations there, so we decided on a super-silent, highly-responsive elevation system that is able to go from 63cm to 128cm (as opposed to the standard 70cm to 120cm) — this should fit Tyrion Lannister and Gregor Clegane, should they ever make up and decide to share a desk some day. We simply wish upon everyone to enjoy full control over the highs and lows of their work.