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One of the things that I really struggled with when I first started working from home was a lack of storage space. Although a lot of colleagues mentioned it, I was surprised at how easy my home office was getting filled up with documents, cables, and other random bits and pieces. Luckily I found that built-in home office shelves were a great option to save on storage without ruining the look of my home office.
Now with these built-in shelves, I knew they were a little bit tricky to fit, and I know a lot of people need help in building these so hopefully, the following tips should help you build a built In-office shelf for your home office.
(Now it’s worth mentioning that this post has a lot of information and so if you’re curious about the best equipment needed to work remotely simply go to my resource page here.)
Figure out if you have enough room for a built-in office shelf
Easily the most important challenge when it comes to building a built-in home office shelf is by asking yourself if you should.
You see, whilst these are fantastic options, ensuring that your room stays neat and tidy, they can take up a fair bit of room.
If your home office is relatively small, has harsh angles, or is weirdly shaped you need to whip out the tape measure and understand how much room you have to put your built-in shelves in.
Doing so will give you an idea of the number of items you can fit in one space whilst resting assured that built-in office shelves won’t take up too much of your room.
Word to the wise, whilst a lot of people do a good job of measuring the base of their built-in office shelves, they forget to take the length into consideration, which can cause problems if you have low ceilings.
Ensure you measure and mark out space and get a second party involved to help.
Understand where you will put your built-in office shelf
Any long term readers of this site know just how much I love how offices.
That being said there are a lot of people out there who work from apartments, studio flats, or live with other people that don’t make it possible to have a home office.
If this is the case with you, you need to figure out where you will put your built-in home office shelf.
I would consider doing the following:
- Ensure that the shelf is near enough and easy to get to from your work
- Try to keep it in a designated space that is not used for anything else
- Keep it away from water or strong smell for example the kitchen when you cook
- Try not to block out any of the natural light that comes through, built-in office shelves can be big so try to take your
Set a budget for a built-in home office shelf
When it comes to the world of home office storage there are hundreds of options with a wide range of pricing options.
That being said if you do decide to go with a built-in home office shelf, you’ll need to ensure you have an adequate budget with built-in office shelves usually costing the most due to the bespoke nature of them.
I mean think about it, unlike flat pack storage, the materials will all need to fit your space, and unless you’re an expert when it comes to woodworking, like a lot of us are, you will need to hire a handyman to help you assemble your built-in shelf.
So what would be a good budget to set when building a built-in office shelf?
A good budget for built-in shelves would be $2500. This should cover the cost of materials and labor and should be a large enough budget to fit almost all home offices.
Consider the materials your shelf will be made of
So once you figure out how much room you’ve got to work with and set yourself an accurate budget, the next step would be to decide what materials you want to go for.
Different materials will have different testing points and cost more or less depending on how much they can hold.
Solid oakwood will cost a lot more than something simple like MDF.
To help explain more, I’ve put together a table below showing the different materials and what they will be used for:
|
Material |
Weight Load | Uses |
Minimum Thickness |
| Oakwood Timber | Heavy (0-200kg/440 pounds) | Oakwood timber is a great option for heavier shelving units that need to hold more items. Timber, in particular, is incredibly versatile and can be made with a lot of different finishes | 18mm |
| Edge Laminated Softwood board | Heavy (0-299kg/659 pounds) | If traditional timber is out of your budget, softwood can be just as strong at a smaller price. That being said the finish on it does not look as good up close but is a perfectly serviceable material for a built-in home office shelf. | 18mm |
| Chipboard | Light (less than 0-100kg/220) | Chipboard is a cheaper material for a home office shelving unit. It is not as strong as other woods and if you do decide to go down this route, consider only using this for lighter options | 12mm |
| MDF | Light (0-100kg/220) | MDF is the material that is used in a lot of flat-pack shelving units because it is super lightweight and has a surprising strength. Just make sure you use an 18mm MDF board as a minimum to ensure it can support at least a medium weight load. MDF also can be painted very easily meaning it will go with the look of your home office easily. | 18mm |
| Blockboard | Medium (0-199kg/438 pounds) | Blockboard is another inexpensive type of wood that can work in building shelving units. Whilst being on the cheaper side, it is still a great option and has the added bonus of sagging less than chipboard and being a lot easier to finish with colors | 18mm |
| Plywood | Medium (0-199kg/438 pounds) | Plywood is another great option for built-in shelving units, it’s relatively inexpensive and sags a lot less than other materials like chipboard. It can be easily finished with paint but just be sure to cover it with trim to cover the different levels | 18mm |
| Glass | Light (0-100kg/220) | Glass is a great option for light shelving material and is aesthetically pleasing as it goes with pretty much any office. Just ensure that you get specific shelving glass and avoid using traditional window glass which is a lot more fragile. | 18mm |
| Aluminum | Medium (0-199kg/438 pounds) | Metals too are becoming more popular for built shelving units. Aluminum is a great option that can support weight loads up to a medium level | 18mm |
| Steel | Heavy (0-299kg/659 pounds) | Steel is an expensive metal to build a shelving unit from. That being said it’s one of the strongest materials known to man and so if you want to put things like an aquarium on your shelf this would be the way to go. | 18mm |
Figure out how many shelves you will need
So once you’ve figured out how many shelves you will need, the next step to assembling your build in-home office shelves is to understand how much storage space you need.
The truth of the matter is that every job role is different and requires a different amount of storage space.
I work in sales for an organization that is paperless, meaning that I would require a lot less storage space in order to do my job than some like a lawyer who is working from home and needs to organize a lot of their case files or teachers who need space to store there exercise books when marking their pupils work.
So how do you estimate how many shelves you would need?
When working from home leave all the items you use over the space of two weeks on your office floor. At the end of the two weeks, you will have a good idea of how much room it takes up and then you can make a good estimation of the size and number of shelves you need in order to store your documents on a daily basis.
Make a list of all the items that will be on your shelf
Once you’ve figured out how many shelves you need for your built-in home office shelf, the next step is to figure out exactly what’s going to go on your shelves.
Every home office is different and so it’s important to ensure that you place the items you need regularly on your shelf.
If you do a lot of YouTube videos, you could place items that would appear in the background of your videos. If you have a lot of files that you need easy access to on a regular basis, then be sure to put them on the shelf too.
Consider using the method I laid out above whereby any item you use for a two-week item you leave lying on your floor. This will give you an idea of how much stuff you can use.
This is also a great option for testing out how heavy your items will be.
For example, if you have a lot of trophies that you want to keep in your office and they are on the heavier side, you’ll get an idea of how much weight your shelf will need to handle.
Come up with the rest of the design
Time for the fun stuff.
Now that you know what’s going on your shelf, the number of shelves you need, and the material it will be made out of, you can really crank up the fun stuff, mainly the rest of the design.
Whilst leaving your shelf in the finish it came in is fine, consider painting it to really match the elastic to your room.
If your office is quite dreary and grey and needs a bit more light in it, consider investing in LED lights to place on the back of the shelving unit to ensure you give yourself a bit more life.
If you’ve gone for a certain aesthetic for your home office then you can add small finishes.
For example, if you have gone for a steampunk home office look then consider adding copper fittings or pipes to your shelf to match the rest of the aesthetic.
If you’ve gone for a more naturalistic type of look and want to be close to the outdoors in your home office, consider adding a few real or fake plants to it.
This way, you can rest assured that you’re built-in shelving unit, like your office, will match your style.
Make a list of retailers to find your items
Once you’ve got your style down, it’s time to buy your items.
Tio starts off you have two options.
- Either find retailers that have premade built-in home office shelves.
- Buy the materials individually and assemble the shelves on your own.
If you decide to go for a premade home office shelf then retailers like Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond are good places to go to which usually have a large range of in-built home office furniture. They also usually offer a service to fix these in too so you could get installation and the item in one go.
The downside to doing this however would be that you would be limited to their designs.
Prebuilt built-in home office shelves from these retailers are typically made of weaker materials meaning if you would want a stronger shelf you might need to go elsewhere.
Either way, it’s worth always shopping around and so I would suggest going to around 6 or 7 of these types of retailers to get variations on pricing to ensure you are paying a fair amount.
It might be the case where you find the price of the shelf for cheap[ but installation makes that retailer unaffordable.
A few good shops then I would suggest would be:
- Ikea
- Bed Bath & Beyond
- Etsy
- Jysk
- Cost Plus World Market
- Pier 1
- Burrow
- Homebase
Consider making your own shelf from scratch
If you decide to go down the other option and build your home office from scratch, you will have a lot more room to maneuver with how your desk will look.
As you know what the materials of your shelving unit will consist of and the size and the finish you are going for, simply draft up a blueprint ( you can use something like a 3d design tool I talked about in my blog post here)
Ensure that this blueprint covers the front, the back, and the side as well as the different materials so you have a good idea of the exact type of materials you will need.
It is then a case of going over to local hardware stores and purchasing the wood, MDF, the metal of your choice to build your shelves.
You’ll find that this will often work out a lot cheaper than getting one pre-built.
Consider hiring a specialist carpenter if you need to
If you’re anything like me, you’re about as useful with a hammer as you are about explaining quantum mechanics … ( I hate science)
If this is the same with you then you’ll likely need to hire a contractor to help you assemble your built-in home office shelf.
Now whilst some of the larger retailers will often have the option of assembly, this can sometimes be quite expensive.
If you decide to buy your own materials and go down the bespoke unit you’ll definitely want to hire this out to a private contractor to help and so using sites like Trustatrader.com is a great option to find exactly what you are looking for.
Ensure you contact a few different contractors and share with them the blueprints we talked about before.
I’d also consider sharing with them Pinterest links with image ideas of what it is you are looking for to help them further visualize.
Aim to hire a contractor who has a lot of experience in building these types of shelves.
In my opinion, carpenters are the way to go for this as they understand exactly how woodworks and so can advise you if your fabulous design is a little bit too out there.
Set yourself a realistic deadline
Whilst we all think we’re the Flash being able to get stuff done in the blink of an eye, the truth is that DIY projects like built-in home office shelves can be time-consuming.
Think back to when you’ve had to do another project, whether it’s the bathroom or painting a hallway.
You know that what you thought would be a one day job turned out to take a lot longer to complete.
In my experience with a contractor., building inbuilt home office shelves takes around 3-4 days to complete from beginning to end.
Set aside a set amount of time every day to build your shelf
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are bespoke built-in office shelves for your home office.
This is a marathon, not a sprint and so if you are building your shelving unit yourself, it’s important to spend a set amount of time every day to work on the project.
Even if you only have 15 minutes every day, you’d rather spend longer to complete the project then do a rush job and end up with a shelving unit that is an eyesore to your place of work when working from home.
How to build your own built-in shelf?
If you do decide to go down the route of building your shelving unit yourself and avoiding any help it’s important that you follow the following steps to ensure you do a good job as possible.
Paul Tran DIY does a great job explaining these steps in the video below
But to help explain these steps further:
Measure the walls
Step one in the process is to measure the wall that you will be placing the shelving unit against.
For best results try to ensure that the wall is straight to avoid making it hard on yourself.
When measuring it’s important to not only measure the length of the base of the shelving unit but also how far out it will come. This way you will get an idea of how much room it will take.
Remove your carpet and flooring
If your home office has carpet or any decent flooring for that matter (newspapers don’t count) then it’s important to remove any carpet that will be underneath your built-in office shelves.
Not doing so can lead to an uneven surface and can cause your shelves to wobble in the long term.
Start assembling your base
If you are building your base from scratch, cut your material of choice down to size.
For a solid base using plywood, consider having your wood 5.5 inches off the ground to give enough clearance.
Cut the plywood into the length and width of the space your office shelving unit will go and use screws or a glue gun to join them together.
You will then need to attack a top to cover the hole to give you a solid base to start working from.
Add your floor shelves
Once you have assembled your base it’s time to start adding shelves.
If you want some extra storage space you can add draws to the bottom of your shelving unit.
If building this from scratch, measure the length width, and height you would like these draws to be, and using your material of choice assemble these by cutting your material to size and screwing/gluing these together,
A good alternative to this however would be to buy cheap draws and screw these or place these gently onto your base.
Fill in any gaps in your floor shelves
If you do buy custom draws for the bottom of your shelf, you may be left with some excess room.
If this is the case, measure how much space you have leftover and fill them with spacers or insert small bits of spare wood ( or the material you are building your shelving unit with) to give more storage space
It’s important to also mark out any stud space on your wall to add more support for your floor shelves as you will be using these later on when building the top of your shelving unit
Make sure everything you’ve built so far is level
So once your base unit and bottom row of draws/shelves has been assembled it’s important to ensure everything is level.
The bottom of the shelf will carry the most amount of weight so if you plan on putting heavy items it’s good practice to make sure things are level at every stage possible.
Attach a countertop on your floor shelves
The next step is to add a top to your floor shelves.
This is important as it will be the thing that will support the rest of your shelving units, again make sure this is wide enough to support the weight and covers any dead space.
If possible I would consider using a stronger material for this than for the rest of your shelving unit as it will be the item that has to support the most amount of weight.
Screw this into the shelves below to really secure this in place
Assemble your top shelves
The next step is to assemble your top shelves.
If you have this pre-built, simply screw these into your countertop ( although consider getting some help doing this as it is definitely a two-person job)
If you are building the shelves yourself, once again measure the length, width, and height of the shelves you will need and cut them into pieces.
Then, using screws or glue attach these bespoke made shelves together.
Be sure that for the shelves that are closest to the walls to add an extra layer of your desired material to further support the shelving unit.
Finish and sand your shelving unit down.
With projects like this, it’s always good to give it a good look to cover up anything like screw heads that may be exposed or sand down any rough patches that are unsightly.
Doing this at this stage will make things easier to pain on the next step
Paint your shelving unit
Now the fun part.
If your shelving unit is made from a material that is easy to paint, finish it with the color that best matches your office.
If you are interested in going forward with the shelving unit for a home office where you need to stay focused consider the color blue, which has been scientifically proven to keep people more productive.
Finish with LED lighting
To really make your built-in office shelf stand out I would consider adding LED lighting to them.
This helps make them pop and can even be customized so that each shelving unit has its own unique color, which works great in things like Youtube videos.
FAQS
As you can imagine there are a bunch of questions when it comes to built-in home office shelves, let’s explore these below:
What are built-in shelves?
Built-in shelves are custom-built shelves that seamlessly fit into your home office. They are designed so that they appear as though they were a part of the original design of the room, usually replacing an entire wall.
Is it cheaper to build or buy your own office shelves?
It is usually cheaper to build your built-in home office shelf from materials you’ve bought then buying one from a well-known retailer who charges a premium for things like assembly.
How much does it cost to get buildings built?
A good budget for a built-in office shelf for a home office would be $2500 which should be enough to assemble a quality shelving unit made of durable materials for medium to high weight loads. This price is likely to increase depending on the quality of the material, with steel shelves costing more than plywood.
What are some good alternatives to shelving solutions?
Filing cabinets, desk drawers, bed boxes, and traditional shelving units are all good alternative solutions to built-in office shelves. These are often much cheaper and are much easier to assemble, saving you both time and money for your home office storage needs.
To find out my recommendations check out my storage solutions here.
How long does it take to build a built-in home office shelf?
It takes approximately 3 to 4 days to complete building inbuilt home office shelves. This will take into consideration measuring the space, buying the items, assembly, and clean up. Larger built-in home office shelves can take longer depending on the materials they are made out of.
What are the most common materials for built-in home office shelves?
Oak, timber, MDF, and plywood are the most common materials used for built-in home office shelving units. Other materials used for stronger shelving units include metals like aluminum and steel. Avoid material like corkboards which have been known to bend under heavy stress loads.
Finally, a lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.
The content on this on this site has been written by Fehed Nicass who has over a decades worth of experience in sales and has worked remotely for the past 2 years.
