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5 Ways to Use Your Patio While Working From Home

Updated: 3/30/2020 | Want more? Sign up to our email list today. | © www.patioproductsusa.com


Working from home has it's pros and cons. One of the upsides is that you can use your outdoor spaces more than ever! Your patio can serve as an outdoor meeting space, or as a way to separate your work day from your home life by decompressing while cooking dinner on the grill or eating on the deck.

Here are our tips for using your outdoor space to continue to improve your work-life balance!

outdoor living area with a laptop computer and coffee on a wooden table

How to Create an Outdoor Office Space

Working from home doesn’t automatically mean staying indoors all day when the sun is shining and the weather is just right. With a few strategic installations, you can create an effective outdoor office space! A few of our staff members have already set up a patio outside office at their homes.

This is especially useful if your indoor space is being used by others, like spouses who are also working from home or kids who need the indoor space to complete their at-home class assignments. Stepping outside into the fresh air and away from noise and other distractions inside the house can help you clear your head and get your work done, all while enjoying the peace and serenity of your outdoor living space.

To complete your patio outdoor office, you’ll need a patio dining set, a patio heater for chilly mornings, and an umbrella or sail shade for warm afternoons.

There are a lot of patio dining set options available to match your style and needs. We recommend using a patio dining sets for your outdoor desk as opposed to a patio conversation set for your workspace because the height of the table and chairs in a dining set is better suited to sitting upright and working for longer periods of time. Conversation set tables typically sit lower, closer to coffee tables than dining tables, and hunching over to reach your computer could cause back problems quickly. We’ll have other uses for conversation sets a little further down in this article!

tabletop patio heater

If you have a large table that can accommodate your computer and other large items, we recommend a tabletop heater. These smaller heaters are cost-effective and will deliver heat right where you need it most at your outdoor desk. If your table workspace is on the smaller side, we suggest going with a portable heater that can be moved out of the way when you’re done using it to keep the cold morning air at bay. If your outdoor living space is covered, or if you are interested in more permanent heating installations, now is a great time to look at our ceiling mounted heaters. Many of these can be installed with controls that have a timer feature, so you don’t have to worry about leaving your work space to turn the heater off once the temperature warms up!

a covered outdoor living area with matching conversation set, coffee table, fireplace, and drop in grill lit with an outdoor chandelier and heated by ceiling-mount heaters

How to Create an Outdoor Break Space

Now it’s time for the patio conversation sets to shine! One of the first how-tos of working at home is to keep your work space and your break/meal space separate in order to maintain your work-life balance.

It’s important to step away from the office when you’re taking a break. If you don’t, you may not be able to fully relax, which defeats the point of the break. Just like working in the office, breaks are an important and essential part of your schedule that allow you to reset, refocus, and come back to your tasks fresh. Breaks are no less important when you’re working from home.

And what better way to set up a break space than by placing a conversation set in your backyard living space? There are tons of options in patio conversation sets that will match your personal backyard patio ideas, creating an even more pleasing area for you to unwind from your work day. Sit down, release the tension from your shoulders, and enjoy a warm cup of coffee or tea as you soak in the sun! This method works whether you have an indoor our patio outdoor office, so long as you don’t take your work with you to the break space!

To really get that office-break-space feeling, we recommend using a conversation set that has a table and a couch or loveseat (we miss the couches in our break area already!). Place a few magazines or books on the table for you to read while on your break to complete the effect and make sure this is a space for R&R, not work!

an outdoor living area with matching conversation set on a wooden deck surrounded by plants

Dining Away From Your Work Space

Just like with breaks, eating meals away from your office space is important to maintaining work-life balance and giving your mind a chance to rest and reset. However, many of us are using our dining room tables as our work space during this time. What are we to do about meals?

Take Lunch Breaks Outdoors

It’s generally recommended that you take your lunch break away from your desk, but what do you do when you’re working from home and your dining table is your desk? Take lunch to your outdoor living space, of course!

Grab a patio chair, kick back, and enjoy your lunch surrounded by the ambience of nature. Both patio dining sets and patio conversation sets can work equally well for this. If you generally eat lighter meals that don’t involve the use of utensils—like sandwiches, wraps, etc.—you can even leave the table out of the equation and use a patio chair in a scenic part of your backyard living space as your go-to lunch spot.

an outdoor living area with a drop in grill, deck lights, and a portable led lantern at night

Cook Dinner Outside on Your Grill

What better way to signal the end of a work day than by leaving your office area and grilling a tasty meal for your family? It lets you get outside, distance yourself from your workplace, and enjoy the good weather... and the good eats!

A grill is an essential fixture of a home patio, and Patio Products USA has the top models on the market! Whether you’re starting out or a seasoned grill master, we’ve got everything you need to set up an outdoor kitchen and start grilling some amazing food.

Not sure what to cook? We have a few different recipes you can try on your grill!

an outdoor living area featuring a a grill with vegetable and chicken kebabs and hotdogs

Going Out to Eat, At Home

Social distancing and other measures to slow the spread of coronavirus have shut down indoor-eating for many—if not most—restaurants. While it’s a bummer that we can’t go out to eat at our favorite places, it’s more important to help keep people safe and healthy. Fortunately, you don’t have to give up the restaurant atmosphere entirely! We’ve devised clever ways to use ambient lighting to transform your outdoor living space into a restaurant/lounge area of your own! (And when social distancing is no longer needed, you’ll have a classy outdoor dining area for entertaining—win-win!)

hanging outdoor pathway lights in an outdoor living area lit for atmospheric lighting

To achieve the kind of warm, soft glow of restaurant and lounge ambient lighting, you’ll first want to use pathway and/or deck lights around your backyard living space to make sure you have enough light to move around safely. A lot of restaurants and lounges use low lighting to create a peaceful, intimate atmosphere, and the wait staff are able to maneuver guests safely around the dimly lit area. At home, pathway and deck lighting can help reduce tripping hazards while not interfering with the same subtle atmospheric lighting.

a lit chandelier in an outdoor living space over a wooden dining table with a white jug and lit candles

Next, determine where you’ll be eating and what kind of power source is available in your outdoor living space. If you have a covered patio, this could be a great time to install outdoor pendants, chandeliers, or flush-mounted lighting to enhance your outdoor living space. If you are instead dining in an open area, such as a conversation set, consider placing a portable lantern on your table. You can also set up your at-home going-out experience near aesthetically pleasing planted areas, then use directional accent lighting to highlight the plants and your dining space at the same time! In fact, some restaurants use this very method to enhance their interior décor. There are limitless backyard patio ideas that can transform your outdoor living space into an upscale eatery!

During this difficult time, managing stress and maintaining a work-life balance are important to our wellbeing as a society and as individuals. We at Patio Products USA want to help in any way that we can. If you think enhancing your backyard living space to become a patio outdoor office or staycation getaway from your indoor workplace would be beneficial, or if you had plans for your patio prior to the outbreak, please give us a call. We’d love to talk to you about your goals for your dream patio and help them become a reality. It is our goal to serve you as best we can, rain or shine!

Please stay healthy, safe, and as comfortable as you can! This difficult time will pass, and we want to help it pass a little more pleasantly in whatever way we can.

an outdoor living area with a lit fire pit and patio chairs at night with path lighting on a stone patio

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