Guides · Home office · 12 min read · Updated September 2026

Desk placement

The command position, sitting down. Where a desk goes decides what is behind you, what is in front of you and where the light falls, and the tradition has an answer for each. The scholar’s studio the answer comes from, the three conditions, which side the window goes for a person who writes, the desk’s own numbers, the four desks that are not in a study, and the order in which to give things up.

Oriented SE 126°

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Fig. 01 A desk and chair by a window. The tradition wants the window at the side of the desk, not behind the screen and not behind the chair.

Sit down at the desk. What is behind you? Can you see the door without turning round? Is the window somewhere other than behind your screen? These are the three questions the tradition asks of a bed, asked again of a chair, and a desk that answers all three is in the command position. This guide draws that position, gives the room it was first worked out in, adds the numbers a desk has, and then draws the four rooms in which most desks actually live.

The scholar’s studio

The desk the tradition placed was a scholar’s. The studio of the Ming literatus, the shufang, was a small room set apart from the household, and the connoisseurs wrote about it as they wrote about paintings. Wen Zhenheng’s Treatise on Superfluous Things, written in the 1620s and studied by Clunas as the manual of Ming taste, gives the studio its own chapter: a desk of a single broad plank, long and plain, set under a window with paper or gauze in it so that the light came in soft and from one side; a couch behind, for reading lying down; a stand for the brushes and the inkstone at the writer’s right; few objects, chosen and changed with the season, and nothing that glittered. The room was to be quiet, secluded and clean, and the window was to look at something, a rock, a stand of bamboo, a bare wall lit by the sun. Every rule in this guide is in that room already: the wall behind, the light from the side, the view in front, the few things.

The three conditions

Plan 01 Where the desk faces: three positions in one room A, solid: the chair with the wall behind it, the desk in front, the door in view and the window to the side. B, ghosted: the desk against the wall with the sitter’s back to the door, the arrangement most rooms fall into. C, ghosted: the sitter’s face to the wall under the window, with glare on the screen and the door behind. The window at the side gives light across the desk without glare, and is the reason A stands where it does.

A wall behind the chair. Not a window, not a doorway, not the open middle of the room. The tradition reads the wall as the hill behind a good site; the office reads it as nothing appearing over your shoulder, and no window turning you into a silhouette on a call.

The door in view. From the chair, without turning, you should see the door and whoever comes through it. The tradition gives this condition the most weight, and it is the one with the plainest basis: people startle at what arrives behind them, and a room in which every arrival is a small startle is a tiring room.

Out of the door’s line, and the window at the side. The desk should not sit in the axis of the doorway, and the window should fall on one side of it rather than behind the screen or behind the chair. The first is the tradition’s; the second is what every lighting designer says, and it happens to agree.

Which side the window goes

Fig. 02 Which side the window goes, for a person who writes. Seen from above, a right-handed writer at a desk with the window on the left, A, and on the right, B; the light crosses the desk from the window and the writing hand throws its shadow away from it. In A the shadow falls to the right of the hand, off the page, and the line being written is lit. In B it falls to the left, onto the words just written, and the writer works in the shadow of their own hand. The tradition’s scholar sat with the window on the left, and the desks in the Ming studio manuals stand that way; a left-handed writer reverses the drawing, and a person at a screen, who throws no shadow that matters, keeps only the rule that the window should be at the side and not behind the screen or the chair. The light is drawn as if from a low window, which is when the shadow is longest; at midday from a high one the shadow shortens and the difference matters less. The rule is older than the screen and survives it: a desk at right angles to the window, the writing hand on the far side from the glass.

The tradition says the window at the side, and the scholar’s desk says which side. A person writing with the right hand throws the hand’s shadow to the side away from the light; with the window on the left the shadow falls off the page and the line being written is lit, and with the window on the right it falls on the words just written. The Ming desk stood with the window on its left for that reason, the brush stand at the right, and the drawing gives the two cases from above. A left-handed writer reverses them. A person at a screen throws no shadow that matters and keeps only the larger rule, that the window be beside the desk and not behind the screen, which puts a bright field behind a darker display, or behind the chair, which puts the room in the glass.

Four desks that are not in a study

Most desks are not in a room of their own. They are in a bedroom, in a corner of the living room, shared with a partner, or pushed up against the window because the view is good. Each of these has a version of the command position, and each has a default arrangement the tradition would move.

Fig. 03 Four desks that are not in a study. A: in a bedroom, the desk beside the bed rather than facing it. B: a living-room corner turned to face the room. C: two desks side by side rather than face to face. D: a desk that had faced the window, turned so the light comes from the side. In each room the door is at the bottom left; the solid desk has a wall behind the chair and the door in view, and the dashed line is its view of the door. The ghosted arrangements are the ones the room first suggests.

In a bedroom. The desk should not face the bed, and the bed should not face the screen. The tradition’s reasoning is that work and rest should not share a line of sight; the sleep research says the same thing about a lit screen visible from the pillow. The desk on the wall beside the door, with the bed to its side rather than ahead of it, usually satisfies both; a screen that is turned off and dark at night satisfies the rest, and the bedroom page gives the yin end of the house the desk is intruding on.

A living-room corner. The corner that seems to offer the most shelter is the one that faces the wall. Turn the desk so that the sitter’s back is to the corner and the room, the window and the door are all in front. A corner treated this way is a small room inside the large one, which is what the tradition wants a workplace to be and what Alexander’s alcove is.

Two desks. Partners’ desks pushed face to face, so that each person looks up into the other, are disliked by the manuals as a confrontation and by the people who sit at them as a distraction. Side by side, both facing the room, or at right angles with the two chairs sharing a wall, gives each sitter the command position and the other person at the edge of the eye rather than in the middle of it. The home office page draws the pairs.

At the window. A desk facing the window looks out of the room; a desk with its back to the window puts the light behind the sitter. The tradition dislikes both, the first as a sitter with no wall ahead and the second as a sitter with no support behind. Turn the desk ninety degrees. The view is still there, the light falls across the work, and the door comes back into sight.

When nothing fits

In order of what to give up:

Give up the diagonal before the wall. A desk in line with the door but with a wall behind the chair is better than a desk at the perfect angle with a window at its back.
Give up the view before the wall. If the only solid wall puts the door behind you, take the wall and put a small mirror beside the screen where it shows the doorway. This is a modern remedy for a modern room, and it works for the reason it is supposed to: you can see the door.
Give up the window last. If the chair must have the window behind it, make the window solid for the working hours: a blind that closes, a tall chair back, the desk pulled a little forward so that the light falls on the work and not on the screen. The windows guide gives the sill height at which a window behind a chair stops being behind it.

Checklist

Wall behind the chair, with ninety centimetres to push back
Door visible without turning
Desk out of the door’s axis
Window at the side, on the left for a right-handed writer, not behind the screen or the chair
Surface at seventy-two to seventy-six centimetres, the screen’s top at the eye
Nothing heavy or sharp overhead or aimed at the chair (see beams and corners)
In a bedroom, the desk beside the bed, not facing it
Two desks side by side or at right angles, not face to face
Something to look at when you look up