Make sure these items are on your home office supplies list
If you’re one of the many people who started working from home within the last few years, your home office setup likely began with an improvised solution: kitchen tables, extension cords, stacks of paper taking over counter space, and so on. Rather than building a patchwork of solutions onto a space that was never meant to support a workday, it’s time to take a step back and revisit what you need to make your job happen — and that starts with choosing the best home office accessories.
No two remote or hybrid jobs are the same, but this list of work from home setup essentials will help you get the best possible foundation for many happy years of out-of-office productivity.
Creating a new work from home setup or looking for ways to improve your existing home office? Read our guide for practical tips and principles.
Ergonomic desk and chair
While a kitchen table is a great place to gather for meals with friends and family, it’s a poor place to spend your days working. If you only take away one thing from this list of the best home office accessories, let it be the fact that your body deserves equipment that supports healthy and comfortable working conditions — and your work does too, if you want to be able to keep doing it consistently without aches and pains slowing you down.
Sit-stand desks are growing in popularity as more studies point to their potential health benefits, and their flexibility in adapting to either seated or standing postures makes them easy to use throughout the day. Make each option as comfortable as possible by investing in a standing desk mat and an office chair that allows you to customize seat height, armrest height and angle, and other characteristics to find the best configuration for your body.
Dedicated computer and monitor
Retaining a suitable work-life balance can be one of the greatest challenges of working from home. Unlike an office you can leave at the end of the day and not think about until tomorrow, you’ll never be more than a few moments away from getting a “little” work done in your home office. In that respect, one of the best home office accessories you can have is a dedicated laptop that you only use for work. Keep all of your work and collaboration tools on it — not on your phone or other personal devices — then close it and put it away when you’re done.
Unfortunately, the compact design of a laptop can run counter to good ergonomics. The main issue is viewing angle. If your laptop is positioned so you can type on it comfortably, you will likely have to look too far down to see the screen, or you’ll run into the opposite problem if you keep its height just right for your eye line. Fortunately, this issue can be easily rectified by investing in a standalone monitor — opting for a portable monitor will even allow you to take a compromise-free working setup with you as you travel.
Did You Know?:The ScanSnap Squad is a team of professional ScanSnap power users assembled from across industries. We’re proud to share their tips and tricks to help digitize your world.
Lighting
It can be easy to overlook lighting as part of your home office supplies list, but if your work includes looking at a screen for extended periods of time, you’ll be glad you set your eyes up for comfort beforehand. Digital eye strain is a real problem, and one of the best ways to combat it is with balanced lighting that doesn’t come from your computer.
The specific type of lighting setup you need will vary greatly depending on the particulars of your home office, how much natural light it allows, and what time of day you typically work. Wi-Fi-enabled smart bulbs that can change their brightness and color temperature throughout the day are a great way to support eye comfort in a variety of conditions — and their more vibrant color options are perfect for a quick Friday afternoon home-office dance party.
Webcam and headphones
Most laptops come with a built-in webcam and microphone, but for most folks, a standalone webcam is still a work from home setup essential for two reasons: A standalone webcam will allow you to position it to frame yourself in a pleasing angle without contorting your laptop (or yourself), and it will likely allow for better image quality as well. It will also be easier to pair with a ring light or other webcam lighting setup, which will help your webcam capture a more consistently pleasing image of your face.
Meanwhile, even a very affordable pair of headphones will eliminate the chance of annoying echoes and feedback derailing meetings. They will also make it easier to focus on work in case you can’t control the noise level in your surroundings. If you frequently deal with a noisy environment, you may wish to spend a little more money to pick up a pair with active noise cancellation (ANC). These types of headphones use imperceptible sound waves to cut down on undesired background noise, and the best ANC headphones can make it much easier to block out potential distractions.
Did You Know?:Our guide to how to find the best home office printer-scanner solution will help you pick the best fit for your needs.
Printer and paper
While many modern businesses do much of their work electronically, needing to make hard copies of documents is still enough a business reality that you’ll likely want to keep a printer handy. All-in-one devices such as printer scanners offer some extra convenience but are often jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none — if you use paper documents enough to need a printer, it’s likely worth opting for a standalone model instead.
Your choice of paper is just as important for your home office supplies list. Since more and more industries are reducing the need to print and physically store every document, the documents you do print out are likely to be of special importance. Choosing higher quality, acid-free printer paper will help to ensure these documents remain legible and otherwise in good condition for years to come.
Scanner
We know you have no shortage of options when it comes to choosing a home office document scanner. We pride ourselves on having spent the last 50+ years designing and developing some of the most beloved electronics in the world, including our line of award-winning, easy-to-use, one-touch ScanSnap scanners.
The ScanSnap iX1300 was built to be the ideal document digitization companion for a home office environment. Its compact footprint and neat exterior unfolds to reveal a 20-page automatic document feeder, with double-sided scanning speed of up to 30 pages per minute. It’s equipped with USB and Wi-Fi connectivity for easy integration into your working process, and it's one-button scanning lets you capture and store important documents without fuss. Click here to learn more and shop the full line of ScanSnap scanners.
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