A desk can look all kinds of ways, and plenty of people who’ve kept messy ones, from Albert Einstein to Nora Ephron, have gotten a lot of good work done. For most people, though — and particularly for aesthetes — some degree of order is preferable. The Colombian designer Natalia Criado, 40, who last year released a collection of silver-plated tabletop objects, believes your desk “should be clear so that your thoughts can be clear,” she says. Her paper and note holders were solutions to her own drawers full of perpetually loose sheets and slips, which influenced her to “turn chaos into something structured.”
But neatness doesn’t necessarily mean emptiness — a surface so pristine it seems to forbid the messiness of creative work. The author Mary Randolph Carter, 80, has written multiple books on home design; for her, “a desk is a refuge, a haven, a place where we can be productive surrounded by the objects we need and love.” The quirky, joy-sparking ones she keeps at her desk include a tin owl, a wooden Canadian Mountie, a yellow papier-mâché squirrel and a rock that looks like a skull, she says. In light of the new year and the urge, perhaps, to lead a more organized life, T spoke to several experts about how they keep their desks and how — if you’re looking to create a work space that’s both inviting and inspiring — you might keep yours.
Carve up the surface area.
Josh Itiola, 39, a freelance architectural designer and a planner at the British furniture company Vitsoe — known for producing the German industrial designer Dieter Rams’s shelving systems — recommends arranging your reference materials in neat, shallow piles, with the larger items at the bottom.
He also thinks that designating different areas of the desk for different kinds of work can boost productivity. That way, administrative tasks are less likely to infringe on creative ones, and you’ll have a clear sense of when you’re researching and when you’re getting down to the business of making something, say. He cites the Parsons table in Philip Johnson’s studio — a small, free-standing work space and library on the architect’s Glass House property in Connecticut — as an example. As Itiola explains of the table, originally designed by the French minimalist Jean-Michel Frank in the 1930s, it was “situated so reading and research were done on the front side and his drawings on the back side, directly under the skylight.” Notably, Johnson added a chair on each side.
Never stop archiving.
What to do when a project, or pile, becomes a thing of the past? “Maintaining a healthy archive is important to me,” says Sandeep Salter, 37, the co-owner, with her husband, Carson Salter, of the New York clothing and home goods shop Salter House and gallery Picture Room. “It grounds me, even if my work is spread around and migratory.” (When moving between her home and businesses, she carries her laptop and documents in a large leather folio by Pinetti.) So, while she subscribes to Itiola’s method — “with samples, drawings, prototypes and references for each project in one stack” — she also keeps an array of these hinged lid boxes in different sizes, which she labels in pencil. The boxes sit on a bookshelf, in a corner next to Salter’s home desk or tucked away in a cupboard. If you have a surplus of old but important papers, Itiola recommends under-the-desk storage solutions such as Bisley’s two-drawer steel home file cabinet or Litfad’s minimalist filing cabinet.
Let there be light.
The experts diverge on the value of a desk with a view — Salter’s home desk overlooks her neighbors’ garden, whereas the Irish writer Megan Nolan, 35, likes that hers looks out on nothing special, the better to avoid distraction. They agree, however, that it’s best to position your desk under or near a window to maximize natural daylight. For darker hours, opt for a lamp with warm bulbs — Criado favors these vintage-style ones — rather than overhead lighting. Salter likes her Jieldé table lamp for spotlighting drawings. Nolan uses a banker’s lamp because, as she says, “I find it calming to work at night with my work lit only by that. It introduces a bit of romance.” And Itiola is a fan of the Tolomeo by Artemide for its versatility: It can be purchased with a standard base or a clamp that allows you to attach it to the edge of a desk or shelf.
Facilitate ritual.
“I always make a cup of tea before sitting down to work,” says Salter. Criado keeps a water carafe and nice glasses on her desk. She also considers a candle to be essential, while Nolan is a fan of incense. To write her 2023 novel, “Ordinary Human Failings,” she spent the better part of two years at her desk in her apartment in South London, and she often lit a stick of Incense of the West’s Piñon to ignite her focus. “It’s a signifying habit telling you it’s time,” she says.
Contend with technology.
“Phones and laptops are part of our lives, but we don’t have anything design-forward to put them on,” says Criado, which is why her collection, called Escritorio, contains silver-plated stands that hold your iPhone or iPad at an angle. Another way to elevate your desk’s aesthetic is “to hide the cables, as they always disturb harmony,” she says. For Picture Room, Salter crafted “a neat little box of acid-free archival mat board, sealed together with some cotton tape,” and fastened it over an outlet cover. At a glance, she says, “it reads like part of the baseboard.” Even something as basic as IKEA’s cable management box can help preserve a desk’s dignity, says Criado, who adds that, in 2026, a clunky printer still feels like a necessary evil, but that this, too, ought to be hidden. “My advice,” she says, “would be to put it in a dedicated cabinet.”
Seek out beautiful basics.
You can also offset the unsightliness of modern devices by finding old-fashioned tools that double as lovely objets. “A heavy tape dispenser is a must,” says Salter, who’s found good cast-iron versions on eBay. Her most prized desk accessories are the house scissors and desk scissors from her shop’s in-house line — both have gold-plated handles — while Criado’s favorite item is a letter opener. Naturally, she opted to design one herself, with a wavy handle.
Buy — and create a mise en place of — the best paper and pens.
Criado also keeps her pens, paper clips and business cards in decorative vessels, such as this triangular bowl, that she makes herself. “I like when everything has a defined place, even very small things,” she says. Salter, who loves a handwritten note, suggests keeping one container for pens and another for pencils. She uses a pair of marbled stoneware cups by the Serbian designer Ana Kras and the Brooklyn-based ceramist Natalie Weinberger, and has put Uniballs and a pair of fountain pens — “a maroon Kaweco and a tiny gold Sailor” — in one of them and HB pencils in the other. As for paper, she likes Rivoli’s Block writing pads in pink and cream for drawing and sketching, and this hardcover Japanese cotton paper notebook by Carta Pura and letter sets by Original Crown Mill for writing.
Nolan keeps two kinds of notebooks at hand — “good” ones (like this embossed leather bound Liberty edition her editor gave her as a gift) for outlining and beginning a project, and A4+ ruled ones for “loopy planning and freewheeling notions that don’t necessarily go anywhere.” The former, she says, “are useful for introducing a sense of drama when a project still feels precarious and unreal,” and the latter confer “a feeling of being allowed to mess up.”
Finish with personal touches.
The best artistic work is sui generis, so why shouldn’t your work space be, too? Criado points to the fashion designer Miuccia Prada’s office in Milan, with its clear midcentury desk, clean piles of magazines on an adjacent table and three-story slide designed by the German artist Carsten Höller. “It’s playful, bold and very intentional, just like her clothes,” says Criado. Carter’s a proponent of choosing things with sentimental value: “They will inspire you and lift you up when you get stuck, or remind you of the people and times that made you who you are,” she says. On her desk, an old country table, there’s a note from her mother and a photograph of her father, “a slightly faded Polaroid I took of him wearing a khaki safari shirt and his favorite baseball cap on a beach in Florida.”
In addition to having photographs at her desk, Nolan keeps a Post-it note with a quote from the American composer John Cage. For her, it’s a reminder that, while it’s good to remember who you are, during the flow state, it’s also good to forget: “When you start working, everybody is in your studio — the past, your friends, enemies … and above all, your own ideas — all are there. But as you continue … they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then if you’re lucky, even you leave.”
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