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The Best-Looking Desks to Deck Out Your Home Office

Create a workspace you’ll actually want to work in.

walnut desk overlooking a cityscape Kardiel

By Johnny Brayson and Tyler Chin

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While the number of people working from home has certainly fallen from the height of the pandemic, there’s no question that we are still living in the golden age of remote work. And since home offices have become such an enormous part of so many people’s lives, it makes sense to want to make them as beautiful as possible. After all, if this is the area of your home where you’re spending at least a third of each day, shouldn’t you want it to look nice?

Products in the Guide

And since the centerpiece of any home office is a desk, we put together this guide to the best-looking desks on the internet that will ensure your workspace is just as stylish as the rest of your home.

Kardiel Protractor Jr. Desk

This is one sharp desk, both figuratively and literally, as it’s incredibly striking while boasting harder angles than most other desks you’ll come across. It’s made mostly of solid walnut with some additional walnut veneer, so if you love the natural beauty of walnut, this thing is for you. Our tester says it’s incredibly sturdy, and he loves the floating desk that seemingly hovers between the leg and tabletop.

stylish home office
If you want a desk that’ll turn heads, Kardiel’s stunner won’t steer you wrong.
Johnny Brayson

Its lines are visually compelling, having been inspired by Carlo Mollino’s glass-topped Cavour desk from 1949 (which will set you back a whopping $18,000). Our tester also has his home office set up in his living room, so the desk had to be attractive, high-quality and match his mid-century aesthetic. This checks all boxes and then some.

Fully Jarvis Standing Desk

Good-looking desks don’t have to sacrifice functionality, and Fully’s Jarvis Standing Desk proves that. While most of Fully’s products have gone by the wayside following the brand’s acquisition by office furniture giant MillerKnoll, the Jarvis thankfully survived the culling. One of the best standing desks on the market, the Jarvis’s sleek design is available in a wide range of colors and materials.

fully standing desk
Fully’s standing desk has the good looks to match its outstanding functionality.
J.D. DiGiovanni

Our tester has been using his for years, and it’s put up with being taken apart and moved more than once and has never skipped a beat when it comes to working great and looking good. In fact, it’s so good that our tester sometimes forgets just how good he has it: “It does its job so well, you begin to think it’s unremarkable,” he says.

Branch Office Desk

Branch makes “office furniture for the 21st century.” It’s basically a direct-to-consumer retailer for office spaces looking to create a well-designed office layout. But this translates incredibly well to the home, too. Its office desk is fairly simple with just a wooden tabletop and flared legs, which doesn’t intrude on the rest of your home design. Our favorite configuration of the desk? Woodgrain top with those enviable mirror legs.

Article Madera Desk

This is a lot of desk for well under $1,000. Article’s Madera desk sports an industrial style with its exposed bolts and rustic wood finish. The beloved internet-only brand has no storefront and isn’t taking up real estate in stuffy department stores, so the prices you’re getting are far closer to the true value of the product. And in our experience, they often feel underpriced.

Castlery Seb Desk

Like Article, Castlery is a DTC furniture brand hawking well-made, stylish wares at fair prices. Part of the brand’s popular mid-century-inspired Seb line, this desk boasts flared legs and a ton of storage thanks to a massive yet still sleek-looking drawer and cubby. It’s also built to last, being made from solid acacia wood.

Floyd The Table

This is a big, wide desk (or table, if that’s how you choose to use it) that comes in a flurry of color options and reeks of minimalism. Floyd’s original designs are sturdy — the desk is made from birchwood, linoleum and cold-rolled steel. Push this desk up against a wall and get to work, or, if you’ve got company coming over, stash the laptop and pull up a few chairs for a quick dinner party.

West Elm Mid-Century Wall Desk

Wall desks are the compromise for folks in small living spaces with high demand for storage. West Elm’s narrow Mid-Century Wall Desk is only 38 inches wide but features a seat-level drawer and a standing-height cabinet with space inside and to stack stuff on top. The side-to-side-sliding cabinet doors and the light-colored wood look is clean and simple, hence the mid-century branding. Pair it with its matching bookshelf and you’ve got an ideal mini-home office.

Arhaus Sullivan Waterfall Desk

Who said all stylish desks need to be thin and sleek? Not Arhaus, that’s for sure. The heirloom-quality furniture brand has its own take on minimalism with the Sullivan Waterfall Desk. It has a seamless appearance that looks like one big, bending piece of wood, but it’s actually hand-made from several pieces of sustainably sourced, reclaimed oak. There’s even an integrated drawer that’s basically invisible when closed.

Herman Miller Eames Desk Unit

This mixed media desk, with its playful color scheme, is the space at which you want to work if you’re trying to be the next Eames of your industry. This icon has been powering creative professionals since Charles and Ray Eames first designed it in the early 1950s, and it still feels as stylish and inventive today. We love the use of color, as well as the integrated filing cabinet, which is a clever way to keep your most important documents at arm’s reach.

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Herman Miller Nelson Swag Leg Desk

The two biggest names that come up when discussing Herman Miller’s fantastic mid-century output are Eames and Nelson. The previous desk came from the former, and this one comes from the latter. George Nelson was Herman Miller’s Director of Design from 1945 – 1954, overseeing production of some of its most iconic pieces from Eames, Noguchi and more. But he also was a tremendous designer in his own right, as evidenced by his Swag Leg Desk featuring brightly-colored cubbies, a sculptural two-tired top made from solid walnut and the then-innovative tubular, tapering, flowing “swag legs.”

House of Finn Juhl Nyhavn Desk

While Finn Juhl may not be as well known as Eames or Nelson, his contributions to mid-century modern furniture design should not be overlooked. A pioneer of Danish modern design, Juhl’s influences ran the gamut from organic shapes to tribal art. His Nyhavn Desk incorporates the same drawers sporting colors from Goethe’s color wheel as seen on his famous credenza.

Herman Miller Airia Desk

Recommending the Airia desk by Ayako Takase and Cutter Hutton is a bit of a cliché now, but it’s impossible to ignore. Rounded edges, loads of clever storage (cork-lined drawers, people), a solid walnut desktop frame, powder-coated aluminum legs and an absolutely timeless design (though designed only in 2008) make for the ultimate home workspace. Oh, and it won a Good Design Award the year it was released.

Case Celine Desk

This spread-leg desk is the product of Good Design and Design Plus Award-winning furniture designer from Iran, Nazanin Kamali, and it came out the same year as the Airia Desk. (Apparently, 2008 was a great year for desk design.) Beyond an open cubby and large drawer, it’s characterized by its blend of mid-century shape, conical legs and compact size.

AllModern Alem Desk

Wayfair’s hip sister brand AllModern has no shortage of cool-looking desks in its catalog, but our favorite has got to be the Alem. For such a simple-looking desk, there’s actually a lot going on here. Hairpin legs. A glass top. And a one-piece bentwood body that incorporates a wave-like cubby. And perhaps best of all, the desk is finished all around, making it reversible so you can set up your storage on either side.

Artifox Desk

Tech meets tradition. Artifox’s Desk (which also comes in walnut and a lighter oak) is made black with ink and given a satin finish. Given that Artifox is a brand that’s built for the way we work today, the desk features a cable management system, a headphone hook and a clever felt cable grip that keeps cords in place. The desk arrives in separate parts and can be assembled in short order.

Blu Dot Tabloid Desk

Blu Dot is one of our favorite furniture designers, as everything the Midwestern born-in-the-’90s brand comes up with just looks fantastic. The Tabloid Desk blends materials in a way that only a master designer can, mixing a wood body with a colorful linoleum top and powder-coated steel legs. The result is a desk that doesn’t fit perfectly into any design style but looks effortless in any space. Hidden cord management and a sleek pair of drawers — one big, one small — round out its features.

Akron Street Reader Desk

It’s a rare thing for any solid white oak furniture to be affordable, but this desk manages it while striking a classic look as well. Akron Street’s Reader desk sets up a bit like a larger version of the old schoolhouse desks your grandparents used in grade school. At under 40 inches in width and for a reasonable $895, it’s compact, sturdy and cheap enough to be your work HQ through more than a few moves.

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