4 Trends in Home-Office Design Whether your style is minimalistic or multipurpose, you have design options when work and home collide.

No longer consigned to the basement or unused nook, the home office has emerged as one of the most important residential amenities, thanks to an uptick in both self-employment and flexible working trends.

"The home office comes up all the time—it's on par with programming the kitchen and dining room," says David Dowell, a principal at Kansas City, Mo., architecture firm El Dorado Inc. "It's in the top three things we design."

Whether they're working for themselves or others, some 25 million Americans are calling home "the office" at least one day a week. Among them, 2.8 million self-employed people consider home their primary place of work, according to consultancy Global Workplace Analytics.