When you sit down at your home desk, do you feel inspired or drained?
Your home office may be set up in a dedicated office room, a corner of the dining room, or a walled-in porch area, but no matter where it’s located, it can go one of two ways: it can either be a useful space full of warmth and character, or a drab afterthought smothered in forgotten papers and stray thumbtacks.
Whether you’re answering emails or writing the next great American novel, you deserve a space that feels right. A space with sturdy, beautiful furniture that’s equal parts practical and inspiring.
At Railside Furnishings, we delight in offering premium, handcrafted office furniture made by Amish artisans. We believe that well-crafted furniture is the key to a great home office, and in this blog, we’ll explain why!
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
TLDR: Amish-Built Office Furniture
- To create a home office that’s aesthetically pleasing and functional, you need high-quality office furniture.
- Amish-built office furniture, with its attention to detail, solid-wood construction, and traditional joinery methods, is one of the best options out there.
- Amish-built desk options include executive desks, writing desks, and credenza desks, which each provide unique advantages.
- Besides desks, other Amish-built office furniture essentials include desk chairs, bookcases, and file cabinets.
- Can’t find the perfect piece? Since Amish furniture is uniquely crafted instead of mass-produced, you can commission a customized piece to fit your space perfectly!
3 Key Factors to Creating Your Dream Home Office
We’ve all been there. Whether you work from home full-time, need a place to catch up on emails over the weekend, or simply want a retreat for doing creative work, you set up a desk in some forgotten corner of your home and make the best of it.
The problem is that your environment affects your productivity—and if your home office is an afterthought, you’ll dread working there.
Let’s look at the three key factors to consider when creating an office space in your home:
- Location
Some people like to work in a more social, active area of the house, while others need to be sequestered away in complete silence. Some like to look out a window, while others do their best work in a windowless room.
Depending on your personality, your dream office space may be a desk in your living room or dining room, a converted bedroom, closet, or porch area, or even a well-built backyard shed.
- Functionality
Next, your office space needs to make sense. Your desk should be big enough to easily hold all the monitors and reference papers you’ll need to consult. You need enough storage space for paperwork and office supplies. And it’s not enough to have space for everything—it needs to be intuitive and easy to access.
After all, if you organize your things in a complicated, difficult-to-access way, you’ll end up setting things on the desk or the floor and creating a messy, disorganized space.
3. Aesthetics
Finally, it matters what your space looks like. If your room is full of ugly mass-produced furniture that doesn’t fit the space well, it might technically be functional, but it’s not inspiring you to spend any time there, which kills your productivity.
No matter what location you choose for your home office, the functionality and aesthetics will be well-served by purchasing furniture that’s built to last, with great attention to detail. That’s why we recommend Amish-built furniture.
Keep reading to learn how Amish furniture compares to mass-produced furniture—and why it’s a more stylish option than you may have realized!
What Makes Amish-Built Home Office Furniture Different?
At first glance, a desk is a desk and a bookshelf is a bookshelf—until you’ve lived with them for a while. That’s when the differences between Amish-built furniture and mass-produced pieces become impossible to ignore.
Mass-produced furniture is designed for speed and scale. It’s often made with engineered wood, veneers, staples, and shortcuts that help keep costs down but sacrifice longevity. These pieces may look good in a showroom or on a website, but over time they tend to wobble, chip, sag, or simply wear out under daily use.
Amish-built furniture is created with an entirely different philosophy. Instead of speed and scale, their furniture is designed to hold up for generations, becoming an heirloom. This involves:
- Pride in a job well done
- Attention to detail
- Constructing with solid wood
- Using traditional joinery methods, like dovetail joints and mortise-and-tenon construction
- Timeless designs
Although Amish furniture is designed to be timeless rather than trendy, that doesn’t mean it’s stuck in the 1800s. They also make many modern designs! The key is that even their modern pieces are created to still look delightful after 100 years—something that could never be said of mass-produced furniture! (For an example of what we’re talking about, read our article about our Shefford bedroom collection.)
Now, let’s take a closer look at one of the most important pieces in your office: choosing the right desk.
Choosing Your Desk: 3 Options to Consider
Your desk is the cornerstone of your home office. In fact, many times your desk is the home office, period!
Although there are many desk styles to choose from, in general, there are three basic types of desk that you might want to consider.
- Executive desks
An executive desk is a classic home office staple, with a large, flat top and drawers down each side. It gives you everything you need in a desk—storage space and a large surface area for working.
The key to choosing the right executive desk is to size it carefully, making sure you pick an option that fits your space well and gives you plenty of workspace. If you want your desk to face into the room instead of against a wall, be sure to choose an option with a finished back!
- Writing desks
Writing desks are small, ornate desks with only one small drawer in the center. Unlike executive desks, they’re not designed to be the focal point of a home office. Rather, writing desks are perfect if you want to set up a workspace in your living room, dining room, or bedroom.
A writing desk’s beauty and small size allow it to fit into almost any room. Although it’s not ideal as a daily office setup, a writing desk offers a great change of scenery if you want a break from your office or a nice place to set up a laptop and work for a few hours.
3. Credenza desks
Credenza desks offer a unique desk that doubles as a cabinet. There are many ways to use a credenza desk. For example, you can go the writing desk route and use it as an occasional workspace in a non-office room, but unlike the writing desks, there is an enormous amount of storage space, and you can style the cabinets around whatever room you put it in.
Credenza desks also work well in home offices, offering a lot of extra vertical storage space. However, the upper cabinets cast the work surface in shadow, so if you’re going to use it for paperwork, add a lamp!
But it doesn’t stop there—at Railside Furnishings, we offer modular credenza desk and executive desk combos, creating customizable experiences that wrap around corners, create U-shapes so you can work facing the interior of your room instead of the wall, and more!
Choosing Other Office Pieces: What to Prioritize
You have your desk in place. But an office doesn’t feel like an office with just a desk. What other furniture types should you consider?
Let’s break it down:
- The desk chair. After you’ve been working several hours, the desk chair will feel like the most important piece of office furniture—even more so than the desk! The key is to choose something that looks great and will support you throughout the day, such as upholstered buckeye seating.
- The bookcase. You don’t want a big, heavy desk in your home office and nothing else. Bookcases balance the look of a room, provide extra storage space, and give your office the stately feel of a library or study.
- The file cabinet. Your papers have to go somewhere! A great way to keep them from piling haphazardly all over your desktop is to put them in a file cabinet. (Alternatively, some desks have file cabinet drawers.)
- The easy chair. If you want anyone else to be able to sit in your office and converse with you, or if you want a more comfortable place than your desk to sit and read a book, an easy chair is the way to go!
Of course, your home office may not need all these things, but it’s a good way to think about rounding out your office furniture.
Customization Options for Personalized Workspaces
We’ve covered why Amish-built office furniture is great for longevity and beauty, and thought through what pieces you need in your home office setup. But now, let’s bring it all together and talk about customization.
The problems with mass-produced furniture aren’t limited to the fact that it’s not as nice-looking or long-lasting. The other problem is that it’s difficult to get exactly what you want. You have to simply buy what’s out there and hope you can make it work in your space.
On the other hand, when you buy Amish furniture, it’s often customizable. This means you get to:
- Choose your preferred wood species
- Choose your preferred stain
- Choose a completely customized piece if none of the available designs quite have the look you’re going for
That means you can have a specific vision and get furniture that is exactly what you’re looking for—the right color, the right style, the right size, everything.
How to Find Stylish, Well-Built, Amish-Made Office Furniture
The absolute best option, if you’re looking for high-quality Amish-made furniture, is to visit a showroom in person. This allows you to
- Get a feel for what different woods and stains feel like in person
- Look at the craftsmanship up close to make sure the quality is up to par
- Test out the furniture to make sure you like the size and feel
- Talk to an experienced salesperson about your options
And if you’re unsure how to tell if the furniture you’re looking at is high-quality, we’ve written a blog that can help you identify quality pieces.
At Railside Furnishings, we offer a large variety of expertly-crafted Amish-made furniture pieces, serving Central PA from our showroom in Mifflinburg.
Are you feeling lost about what to get? We can help! Our experienced salespeople can talk you through the advantages and disadvantages of various wood species, answer any questions you may have, and explain all your customization options.
Stop in and see us if you’re in the area, or contact us with any questions!
We look forward to helping you find what you’re looking for.