How to Transition an Old Games Room Into a Modern Home Office

Transforming a games room into a home office is a mental tightrope walk between "This Will Be Fun!" and "I Have Made a Terrible Mistake". All home office projects begin this way. The detail in your fantasies is the first casualty of demolition. Note to self: the ‘goodies’ shelf is essential. Coasters are magnets for condensation, spilt coffee and misfiring automatic weapons.

Do the audit before you spend anything

Step one is to go through the room and compile a comprehensive list of everything in it. We’re not just talking about the big ticket items like the dartboard, the mini-fridge, or the bar stools, but everything that’s currently on a shelf, in a drawer, or piled in a corner. Games rooms tend to collect years’ worth of odd lots of entertainment and 99% of it shouldn’t coexist with a workspace.

Once that’s done, sort everything into three piles: things you can sell, donate, or throw away. If you’re holding onto something, you must designate a specific spot for it that doesn’t encroach upon your workplace visually. A study from Princeton Neuroscience Institute indicated that items of physical clutter within your view actively inhibit your brain’s ability to process information and focus, meaning the wall-mounted pool cue rack is subtracting from your cognitive skill, not just being ugly.

This is also where you’ll decide what can be re-used. That sturdy shelving unit from the old bar may function quite nicely as office storage with a little elbow grease. A good number of those lighting units may just need some re-wiring or a new shade to suit their new purpose. Everything doesn’t need to go, but everything needs a good reason to stay.

The heavy stuff won’t move itself

Once you decide on what’s going, it’s time to get real about the removal. Bar counters, fitted cabinetry, oversize gaming couches, and arcade machines are seriously challenging to extract. They’re intended to be immovable, and almost all of the above were not delivered as a single unit.

Slate pool tables are particularly hazardous to your walls, floors, and friends. A standard three-piece slate bed weighs between a quarter of a metric tonne and nearly half, and slate is brittle along the wrong axis. Taking it out incorrectly can cost you a new doorframe, your floor joists, or an entire slab of slate. This is not a job for a couple of mates and a trolley – Pool Table Removal Sydney crews handle the disassembly, safe transport, and disposal without the structural risk that comes from attempting it without specialist knowledge.

You also absolutely need an expert or three for full-scale deconstruction work, particularly all the bolts the owners before you used to install bafflingly massive death bars and so forth, or anything that was bolted to walls and struts. This part of the job is almost always the most expensive – an old cottage door turned upright and filled with concrete for stability isn’t going to give up the ghost easily with a few deft strokes of a crowbar, and that’s assuming you can even afford to knock your walls around in the first place.

Rebuild the lighting from scratch

Lighting sets the mood for a games room. Focused down light from pool table pendants. Warm, low light at the bar. Neither are suitable when you’re staring at a screen for 8 hours. A great office lighting plan uses three layers. Natural daylight as the base. Overhead diffused LED’s for background light. Adjustable LED task lighting on your work surface. If you have good windows start there. Position your desk so you can enjoy daylight without getting glare on the screen. Then add blackout or diffusing blinds to your window treatments. Background, task, daylight. Adjust the room to your preference, the time of year, and time of day.

Fix the acoustics before your first call

Smooth surfaces reflect sound while rough surfaces absorb it. Game rooms typically consist of the former: bare floors, painted walls, and a hard, untreated ceiling. Have someone make a video call from there and you’ll likely hear echo.

Obviously, you don’t have to turn your game room into a recording studio. A large area rug will already take care of a good amount of floor reflection. Heavy curtains or drapes will also absorb mid and high frequencies bouncing off the windows. A few acoustic panels on the walls directly behind and on the sides of your desk will take care of the reverb tail that still remains. If the desk is situated against a wall of shelving (which is common), simply fill it with books and varied objects and it will break up sound just as effectively as any dedicated panel.

Build boundaries into the layout

The final aspect to consider is the mental partition between work and other affairs that must still exist. If the room has any entertainment features left – a TV, a gaming console, etc. – make sure your setup is positioned such that these are truly out of view when you’re working. Not in the same line of sight. Just out of sight.

Cable management is a similar affair. A mess of cables can turn into background noise visually, eventually adding to the sensory load. Dedicate one afternoon focusing on carefully routing all your cables – clips, conduit, or even just a good old cable box attached to the underside of your desk. It may seem counterintuitive, but having a clean workspace at the end of the day makes it easier to lock the office away, mentally.

A home office works only when it feels like an office. And that mental switch is thrown, not by the right desk and swivel chair, but by having cleared the room out completely in the first place.