Felicity Haythorn
Despite lockdown restrictions lifting, remote working from home is here to stay. Here, we bring together all the essential elements to create your ultimate smart home office.
1 It’s oh so quiet: Sony noise-cancelling Silent White headphone
Sometimes you just need total silence to focus on your work, and this is particularly essential if you’re working from home and other small and noisy members of your family are also there. A noise-cancelling pair of headphones is your saviour (or a sound-proofed room, which Equippd can oh-so-easily design and install for you). We love Sony’s new limited edition Silent White. The new white colour has been developed to embody the concept of silence and serenity, and Sony says these ’phones deliver their best-ever noise-cancelling performance, reducing high and mid frequency sounds. They’re also smart and totally hands free. Simply start speaking to automatically pause your music with the ‘Speak-to-Chat’ feature or enjoy adaptive playback thanks to proximity sensors and two acceleration sensors that detect whether your headphones are being worn or not. Adaptive Sound Control is another smart function that senses where you are and what you’re doing, then adjusts ambient sound settings for the ideal listening experience.
From £400, hitting the shelves from May
2 Stay cool: smart climate control
You’re not going to do your best work from home if you’re hot, humid and relying on a handheld fan to keep cool in summer or teeth-chatteringly cold in winter. We install efficient and effective heating and cooling systems with intelligent control that allows each room to have its own temperature. So, you can keep your home office cool to keep your concentration levels high while the rest of the house is toasty warm. Our technology gives you full control via an in-wall touchscreen or using your smartphone so you can adjust the temperature from your desk.
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3 Please be upstanding: Fully Jarvis Bamboo
If you want a space where you can feel good in your body and do your best work, the most valuable thing you can do is begin by investing in an adjustable-height desk. The Fully Jarvis Bambo’s LED programmable handset lets you quickly adjust from low enough for a child to sit to high enough for a 2 m tall person to stand. It’s crafted from sustainable bamboo grown without pesticides or fertilisers, so good for the environment, too.
From £539 at Fully
4 The all-new iMac
Jazz up your desk with the all-new iMac. Available in a spectrum of jewel-like colours, the striking side profile is so slender, it’s barely there. The new iMac is much more compact, transforming any space into anything you need it to be – perfect for home working. As well as the breakthrough M1 chip, a brilliant 4.5K retina display and superior camera, mics and speakers, it all has a Mac first: Touch ID. Securely log in, make purchases with Apple Pay, or switch user profiles with the touch of a finger.
Available to order from Friday April 30 on apple.com/uk and in the Apple Store app
5 Wake up and smell the coffee: the Bosch CTL636ES1
No more waiting in the morning to make two drinks back to back. The Bosch fully automatic espresso machine can brew two drinks at once, with a click. Just choose your favourite drink – espresso, cappuccino or latte macchiato. And it works handily in conjunction with the integrated Crestron Home system.
6 Light and shade: Lutron lighting and blinds
Lutron is your friend. This lighting system is a cinch to use, requiring just a swipe of a keypad or a simple voice command. Easily dim overhead lights for any task and control natural light to reduce glare on your computer screen by adjusting the height of your window blinds at the touch of a button.
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7 Listen while you work: B&O Beosound Level
One of the benefits of working from home is that you’re in charge of the music. We like Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound Level, a portable wireless home speaker that looks lovely and delivers impressive sound. Its slim design and built-in recessed handle means portability is at its heart and its clever design means you can stand it upright in the kitchen when you’re having your lunch, lie it flat on your desk for a conference call or hang it gracefully on the wall. The speaker intelligently changes its tuning to deliver an exceptional music listening experience in any position, in any room.
Available online and in Bang & Olufsen stores, from £1,099
8 One remote to control them all: Control4 Neeo
We think of Control4 as the ‘brain’ of your home: bringing together and controlling all aspects of your entertainment, environment and security. But how to keep everything under control when you’re holed away in your home office? Use Neeo: an elegant interface to control your entire home from your workstation. Turn on/off individual lights, activate lighting scenes, even lock the doors, right from the comfort of your desk. Access any television from any room or queue up your favorite streaming music service to begin playing throughout the house. The perfect way to get everything ready for when 5pm comes rolling round. If you already have Control4 and are running the latest version of Smart Home OS 3, Neeo can be added to your system easily. Simply order the Neeo remote from us.
9 Are you sitting comfortably: Aeron chair
To keep aches and pains at bay, you need to invest in a ‘machine for sitting’. Enter the Aeron: uniting human-centred design with Herman Miller’s leadership in innovative technology and materials, this is the best-selling and most recognisable performance chair of all time. So you definitely need one.
£1,099 from John Lewis
10 Stay connected: whole-house WiFi
Whether you’re an employee working remotely or running your own business, you’re going to rely heavily on broadband to get stuff done. Internet powers your modern home, and without a strong, fast, reliable WiFi connection, it can all grind to a halt. We make sure your WiFi is available in every corner of your home, particularly your home office.
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