Everything You Need To Know About Custom Desks

 

Casa Kids is best known for its bunk beds, but when our clients hire us to build a custom bunk they often want us to do the whole room. After beds, desks are our second most popular commission. Just like our bunks and lofts, we offer some basic designs that we frequently customize to our customers’ room dimensions and needs. Here’s what you need to consider before buying a custom or semi-custom desk:

 

Location

Before you pick a desk you’ll need to know where it will go in a room. Usually the position of the bed is selected first. Next open all the doors in the room to see how much available space you have on the remaining walls. We prefer to place desks near a window, but not directly under it because it can be hard to see a screen when sunlight is coming in directly behind a computer. Note that some parents like to have desks positioned so they can see their child’s screen from the door.

Desk Type

Once you’ve zeroed in on a location, you’ll need to decide what kind of desk best fits your needs and budget. We have four main types of desk that we create: basic desks, desks with a hutch, floating desks, and adjustable desks. Here are the benefits of each:

Desk + Hutch

Most of our desk commissions also include a hutch, which sits on top of the desk and provides much needed additional storage and display space. Our desk and hutch combos are always designed as separate pieces that are attached on site for easy moving and installation.

Basic Desk

If the budget is tight, a room is small, or your desk sits below a window, you might want to skip a hutch. Our basic desk usually consists of two columns of storage (cabinets or drawers) and an attached worktop. For particularly small rooms, you can do a simple end piece on one side to save space.

Floating Desks

This type of desk mounts directly on the wall and can be a great way to fit a desk into a tight space. For example, we might float a desk if you have a trundle bed that opens and it would hit a standard desk.

Adjustable Desks

A standing desk is nice, but it’s hard to stand all the time, so we design adjustable desks (including our Piano and ConnectMe desks) with adjustable heights ranging from 24 inches to accommodate a small child up to 30 inches for a standard desk; the Piano Desk can also raise to 42 inches to be used as a standing desk.

Drawers

Drawers are a helpful way to keep your workspace tidy and there are many different options for drawers on our desks. When we design a custom desk for our customers, we’ll often look at what they store in their workspace to determine how many and what depth of drawers make the most sense. If you want extra leg space, you might opt for a slender pencil drawer instead of a regular one.

Enclosed vs. Open Storage

With a larger desk, it can be nice to have a mix of enclosed and open storage, so there’s room to display items, have others easily accessible, and hide the rest. We often place open storage in the hutch to give a desk an overall lighter look. Small desks tend to feature all closed storage, which is our customers usual preference because it hides the clutter.

Cord management

When designing a custom desk it is important to think of all the practical elements as well. To minimize cord clutter in the workspace, we design our desks with rear wire holes and a low hidden shelf at the back for routers, surge protectors, and wiring.