After many years of making do with the small bedroom as an office I am finally getting round to spending some money decorating it and setting it up for an office/Man cave. I am looking for tips and advice. My budget (All in) is around $1000-1500. I am trying to avoid "Shoulda done X or Y" kind of scenario.
A bit about me and the setup
I spent a LOT of time in here being an official WFH employee and having a second gig as a freelancer for other companies. It is south/south east facing so gets the sun every day so I cant do face out into the garden or anything. The room is about 18ft by 8ft.
Some thoughts I am having: I am planning on making one wall (13 ft) my work desk because currently I run 2 * 32" 4K monitors for my work laptop and alongside those are my 2 * 24" Dell monitors. I thing the layout on these is sub optimal but I dont think I could ever get used to the "Look up to the second monitor" type of quad arm fits... but how do people with many monitors configure them?
There are also 2 sets of keyboard and mice (deliberately so not to risk contamination from one job to the other). Storage is also a big thing because I, like most geeks have a tonne of cables for every occasion, physical manuals etc?
Is there a colour scheme that works best for long hours and lots of night time work?
What do I need to consider/what tips could you give? One tip I think a lot of people will say is "You can never have a desk that is too wide!" but we will see.
Any advice appreciated.
1. Wacom tablet, basic level. I developed RSI (because of mouse clicking) in 2007/8 and using the tablet in Mouse mode helped hugely.
2. Coccyx cushion
I also like the "keep it separated" structure for work laptop and personal computer. I have a three-wide monitor setup, and the center is shared. I also use separate keyboard and mice, including a vertical mouse, because I found it helped on the right-hand setup to have a different angle.
I have a sit-stand desk that I find to be really great. You can spend lots for that part, but mine is a manual leg set and a melamine top to go with it from Ikea, along with a stool from Ikea as well to make sure I had a few options but none include 'too slouchy.' You may want a proper chair with a back, but I didn't want to find a place for mine when I wanted to stand and move more. I also find that I keep the desk in a pretty narrow range of height once I find a good spot and I keep it there for days. That's why manual is good for me.
I support collaboration tools, so I am on calls often, and have headsets and cameras sent to me to try out, but I find that I use a few things in rotation. I don't like having things in my ears ( so no airpods for me ) but I do like lightweight over-ear headsets. I'm currently using the Logi Zone Wireless Plus, and I've liked their wired version because it is even lighter (they were both sent to me for evaluation) but I still find myself using speakers for some calls, so I have a soundbar connected to the work dock and a stereo receiver connected to the other. I prefer having separate "out loud" connections, so that I don't have to scramble to set up for a meeting, and the headset floats, since it can handle multiple connections ( dongle, two bluetooth ).
I also have separate cameras, making sure that they have a microphone for when I don't want to wear the headset. Cameras can be a little finicky, most will want supplemental lighting to actually look good. The Poly P5 ($55) does really well in very low light, but I found I didn't like the sound of the audio magic it does ( it has great noise cancellation, but I'd rather use my headset) I find myself using Logi[tech]'s older c525 because the framing fits my desk area with little messing around, and because I have two of them atop the central screen, so the perspective is similar for both computers.
To ease the lighting for the cameras, but keep the lights out of my eyes, I mounted LED strips to the ceiling above me, controlled by WLED and a motion sensor. That ( and the melamine desktop ) provides for a soft "bounce" light to help for calls, without the "ring light" feel of staring at a lamp all day.
That's a bit of a book, but hopefully it helps with the decision process. Your desk is very personal and particular, and it is worth spending the time to evaluate along the way as well.