Home Offices & Studies in Goa

More people in Goa now work from home than ever did before — people who moved down from Mumbai, Pune or Bengaluru and kept their jobs, founders running small teams from a spare bedroom in Porvorim, consultants on calls to Europe in the evening, and longer-staying remote workers renting flats near the coast. Add the children doing homework and online classes, and the study has quietly become one of the hardest-working rooms in the house.

Most of these rooms were never designed as offices. They are a spare bedroom, the end of a hall, or an upstairs room with a big west window. Floors are tiled or stone, walls are hard plaster, and the window is wherever the builder put it — which is rarely where a screen wants it. The result is predictable: a bright patch of sky reflected in the monitor at four o'clock, a face in silhouette on every video call, a voice that bounces round the room, and a desk that is too hot to touch by late afternoon.

We plan a home office around the desk rather than around the window. Where does the screen face? Where does the light come from at the hours you actually work? What will the camera see behind you, and how much does the room echo? Answer those, and the choice of curtain, blind, panel or paper follows.