A home office for business owners: setting up the executive floor at home
If you run a business, the company office stopped being the only place you work long ago. Part of the week, often the most important part, happens at home. So the question isn’t whether you set up a home office, but to what standard. As an owner or managing director, your desk at home isn’t a stopgap. It’s the executive floor within your own four walls.
At a glance
The short version
|
Who this article is for
|
The short answer
You set up an executive home office the way you would your company office: with a desk that matches your position. Go for real solid oak or walnut rather than the grey office look, allow enough working surface and think about cable management from the start. The result is a desk that looks assured on video calls, keeps work and private life cleanly apart and lasts for years, instead of looking like a temporary fix. | |
A few years ago the home office was a stopgap for many business owners. A laptop on the dining table, a folding table in the guest room, a solution for a few days. Today it’s a fixed part of the working week, and often the very part where the important things happen: focused strategy work, confidential conversations, video calls with partners, clients and your own team. And still, many people go on treating their home office as something makeshift.
That’s a mistake. If you run a business, you represent it from home as well as from the company office. The desk in the background of a call, the effect of the room, the matter-of-fact way work is done here: all of it says something about you, whether you want it to or not. The good news is that you don’t need a floor of your own or dedicated office space to create a place to work that has presence. You need a deliberate decision, and the right piece of furniture at the centre.
Your home office is a decision, not a stopgap
The difference between a corner to work in and a real home office isn’t a matter of square metres. It’s a matter of attitude. A makeshift set-up signals: I’m only bridging the gap here until I’m back in the proper office. A home office set up with intent signals the opposite. It says: the standard is just as high here, and that’s on purpose.
For an owner or an executive, that’s more than symbolism. Defining a room, or a clear zone, for work in your own home is a productive decision: this is where I work, that is where I live. The separation starts with the central piece of furniture. A desk that matches your position sets the tone for everything else in the room.
Why the material decides the impression you make
The most common mistake in a home office is putting a classic office desk in your home. Grey melamine top, black metal frame, the feel of an open-plan office. A desk like that works technically, but it looks borrowed. In your own home, in front of your own background, it looks out of place, and it adds nothing to the assurance you want to convey.
Solid oak or walnut solves that, because it speaks a different language. A desk in real wood looks well made, calm and lasting. It fits an office that has to look the part just as well as a room you live in, and it doesn’t wear out. It matures. At EDELHOLZ that means, specifically:
- 26 mm solid oak or walnut, no veneer: every top is real wood all the way through, with a genuine grain that gains character over the years instead of wearing away.
- Oak or American walnut: three standard finishes, each shown in real product views. The light, oiled Golden Timber, the warm Deep Walnut and the deeply pigmented Midnight Noir.
- Smoked Amber: oak, stained and lacquered in a smoked-oak tone, for when the desk should feel warmer and have more character.
Which tone is right depends on the room and on what you want from it. A dark Midnight Noir or a warm Deep Walnut looks clear and commanding, almost a statement. A light oak such as Golden Timber brings warmth and openness into the room. If you’re unsure, order wood samples first and hold the finishes against your floor and furniture before you commit.
The video call is your calling card
As a business owner working from home, you’re in front of the camera every day. On a call with a client, in a meeting with partners, in a session with your own team. And the background is always in the picture. In the first few seconds it helps decide how you’re perceived, long before you’ve said your first sentence.
A tidy desk in solid oak or walnut in front of a calm wall looks considered and assured. It signals that someone here works to a high standard, at home too. That isn’t a superficial detail. It’s part of how you come across. And the best part: you don’t have to stage the whole room. It’s enough for the central piece of furniture in the frame to convey quality. Our customer story with Björn Mauersberger shows what a home office with presence and an EDELHOLZ desk looks like in practice.
Your home office isn’t the place where you lower your standards. It’s the place where your standards become visible, even if nobody ever walks into the room.
A place where you like to work
Presence is one side of it. The other is that you spend many hours at this desk, often more than at the dining table or on the sofa. A desk that matches your position but feels cold and uncomfortable won’t stand up to that. The two have to come together: the assured impression you make on others, and the good feeling when you sit down in the morning.
That is exactly the difference between a functional piece of office furniture and a desk you like working at. Real wood under your hands, a calm surface, a height that fits you exactly. These are the details that turn a desk into a place where focused work comes easily.
“I want to feel good in my office, not just work there. If you’re going to sit here for several hours, it ought to be beautiful as well.”
Height and technology: considered, not intrusive
In a home office, two things have a particularly strong say in whether a desk looks assured: its height, and how the cables are dealt with. EDELHOLZ deliberately handles both differently from most home-office suppliers.
On height, we do without motors. The standard height is 76 cm, and when you order you choose anywhere between 72 and 82 cm. This is not electric height adjustment and not a sit-stand desk with a motor. It is your height, made to measure, set once to suit how tall you are and stable for good. In an office that has to look the part, the advantage is twofold: no bulky motor frame to spoil the clean silhouette, and no mechanism that can fail or vibrate under your hand. Tell us how tall you are, or the height you want, and we build the desk to it.
The second point is cable clutter. Nothing undermines an impression of quality faster than a bundle of cables hanging under the top and creeping into the frame on a video call. That’s why CableHIDE cable management comes as standard at EDELHOLZ, at no extra cost and with nothing to order separately:
- Behind a solid oak or walnut flap under the top sits a 6-way power strip with two USB-A and two USB-C ports.
- A 5 m fabric cable runs neatly to the nearest wall socket, even if that’s some way off.
- The tech disappears but stays within reach. All you see is a calm wooden top.
If you want more, the configurator offers optional add-ons such as a MagSafe charging pad, a retractable socket or built-in LED lighting. In a home office, though, the standard CableHIDE is enough in most cases to keep the desk visibly tidy.
Which model suits your home office
How much desk you need depends on your room and the way you work. What matters is that the surface matches your position: enough room for a monitor and paperwork and a tidy overall look, without overwhelming the room. For a home office with presence there are three models to choose from:
- The DeskPURE is the purist version without drawers, from 4.400 €. Even at 160 cm wide it gives you a full working surface, and its slim silhouette looks calm and clear, in more compact rooms too.
- The DeskPRO, from 5.400 €, comes with two soft-close drawers as standard and brings storage right to where you sit, with no need for a separate pedestal.
- The ArcPURE, a 120-degree corner desk, gives you a second work surface. It’s ideal for a dedicated study, in rooms from about 5 m long.
If no standard size suits your room, we build the desk as a bespoke piece, to the exact width, depth and height your home office needs. That way the desk belongs in the room instead of being a compromise.
Keeping work and private life cleanly apart
One of the biggest challenges of working from home is separating work from private life. When both happen in the same room, the boundaries blur and the working day never quite ends. For business owners, who rarely switch off as it is, that’s a real issue.
A fixed, well-made desk helps more than any rule. It turns working into a deliberate act: you sit down, you get up, and the place marks the difference. A desk with enough presence to be taken seriously, yet calm enough not to intrude, creates exactly that boundary. You work with focus when you sit there, and you leave work behind when you get up.
Delivery right into your home office
With a piece of furniture this size, how it gets into the house is part of the result. Every desk is built to order in our workshop in Germany. Right now that takes 12-14 Wochen. Within Germany delivery is free: a removals company that drives only for us brings the desk into the room where it will stand and does the final assembly there. No anonymous parcel service unloading a heavy piece of solid oak or walnut at the kerb.
What you always get
Whether the desk stands in a dedicated study, in a clearly defined zone or in a home office with presence, the product stays the same. Every desk is built to order in our workshop in Germany. The key facts:
- 26 mm solid oak or American walnut, no veneer, in four finishes.
- Cable management: CableHIDE as standard, a solid oak or walnut flap with a 6-way power strip, two USB-A, two USB-C and a 5 m fabric cable.
- Height chosen in the configuration to suit how tall you are, between 72 and 82 cm. Deliberately not electrically height-adjustable, because the fixed construction is more stable and looks slimmer.
- With you in 12-14 Wochen, delivered free within Germany by a removals company that drives only for us, final assembly included.
- A 5-year guarantee and 30-day returns on standard configurations. Bespoke pieces are excluded.
On the business side, the desk can be claimed as a business expense or financed through business leasing (Germany only) with a monthly payment. Which makes more sense in your case is a question for your accountant. If you’d like to try the set-up out first, put together model, wood and add-ons in the configurator and see the price straight away. And if the home office is to grow into a complete set-up, a StudioPURE sideboard in the same wood makes desk and sideboard a single unit.
Frequently asked questions
As a business owner, how do I set up a home office with presence?
Why is a well-made desk worth it for a home office?
Which wood suits a home office with presence?
Which EDELHOLZ desk is suited to a home office?
How do I come across as more assured on video calls?
Isn’t cable clutter a nuisance in a home office?
Are the desks height-adjustable?
In short: the executive floor at home
For business owners and executives, a home office stopped being a stopgap long ago. It’s a fixed part of the working week, and often the most important part. Set it up to the same standard as your company office and you gain twice: a desk that looks assured on video calls, and a place where focused work comes easily. The key is the central piece of furniture. A desk in real solid oak or walnut looks well made rather than borrowed, draws a clear line between work and private life, and lasts for years instead of looking makeshift.
If you’re unsure which model, size or wood tone suits your home office, talk to us. In a personal consultation we’ll settle model, dimensions and finish together. And if you’d like to feel the wood first, wood samples bring the finishes to your home before you commit.
Ready for a home office that matches your position?
We’ll talk your project through with you personally, or you go straight to the model that fits.
Philipp Strobel is a qualified automotive engineer. He brings an engineer’s way of thinking to running a business, and develops desks in which function and design come out of one system. He has been developing products in wood since 2017, and since 2024, with EDELHOLZ, desks for business owners.
