5 L-Shaped Desk Designs
If you have limited space in a room or you’re looking to gain a bit more desk space to put your important papers, electronics, or DIY projects an L-shaped desk is a great way to accomplish that.
We’ve compiled a list of 5 L-shaped desk designs based on some of our past customer projects. If you’re looking to design a custom L-shaped desk of your own and need some help knowing which parts to use or just have a question, don’t hesitate to contact our team for design assistance.
Standard L-shaped Desk Design
If all you’re looking for is a basic corner desk or an l-shaped desk with a leaf, this is my go-to layout. I’ve built two desks using this configuration and both have worked out wonderfully.
The thing to keep in mind here is to ensure your two tabletops are joined properly at the edge where they meet. Because we have left plenty of space for your legs underneath the tabletops there isn’t a lot of support on that point and the strength of your table will rely on your joining skills.
Materials for Standard L-Shaped Desk
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- Completely Customizable
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L-shaped Desk for Corners
This design is similar to the standard l-shaped desk design above, but this demonstrates a layout that is a bit more suited to corners. The additional supports in the back assume that is where most of the weight will be placed i.e. your monitors, keyboard, mouse, your weight as you lean, etc.
Again, the thing to keep in mind is to ensure your tabletops are joined properly or the desk will sag over time and may even fail. I’ve used this kind of nail plate in the past to connect two independent tabletops together and would recommend you consider them if you don’t plan on actually using a joiner to connect the two pieces.
Materials for L-Shaped Desk for Corners
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- Completely Customizable
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Multi-Level L-shaped Desk for Ergonomic Monitor Height
This design allows you to have a standard sitting height desk and then choose a standing height desk for the small extension leaf. This is great for those of you who want to be able to quickly go from sitting to standing but primarily work in a sitting position.
You could also set the height of the extension leaf to be the perfect ergonomic height for your monitor and just use it as a monitor riser.
Materials for Multi-level
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- Completely Customizable
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Mobile-Leaf L-shaped Desk
Many of you working in a garage, shed, or maker space need to have a workstation that transforms to meet the needs of your latest project. This layout is great for that!
Utilizing two of our smooth table frames, one on casters and one using standard plastic plugs, you can have a mobile table that can move around your workspace as you need it and fit snugly against your other frame when in “office mode”.
The important thing to note here is that to make your two tabletops meet perfectly, you will need to do some trimming of the tube on site. Our casters add roughly 120mm to the height of your table frame, so on the frame with the casters subtract 100mm from the overall desired height and then do the fine-tuning on-site.
Materials for Mobile Leaf
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- Completely Customizable
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Materials for Static Table
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- Completely Customizable
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Wall Mounted L-Shaped Desk for Corners
For those of you who like lack floor space or just like the wall-mounted look, here is a simple wall-mounted corner desk that does the job.
This design is also great as a corner table to add a bar too or for serving. Or for those of you schooling your children at home or helping them do their homework after class, a nice way to bring everyone together and keep the floor clear for easy cleaning.
For this layout, you will also need some sort of blocking to run along the back of the tabletop and the wall to give support. You can use an angle bracket or a piece of wood as illustrated, either will work just as well as long as you know what you are fixing to.
Materials for Wall-Mounted
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- Completely Customizable
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Things to Consider When Building Your L-shaped Desk Frame
Before you jump into designing your perfect desk for your home or office, there are a few things to consider.
Proper Desk Height
Grab a measuring tape and measure the distance from the bottom of your elbow to the floor when sitting up straight in your office chair. This will give you your ideal desk height.
If you’re going through the process of creating a custom desk, we recommend putting in the effort to find your perfect height. This can vary quite significantly depending on how tall you are.
For example, my ideal desk height is 700mm to the top of my tabletop, which means if my tabletop is 50mm thick that my frame should be roughly 650mm tall. That is almost 90mm shorter than your typical off-the-shelf desk frame, so a custom desk works perfectly for me to ensure I stay in an ergonomic position throughout the day.
Desk Depth
You should also consider ergonomics when deciding how deep your desk should be. If you want to use a monitor arm or desktop riser, you may need the back of your tabletop to be 830mm away from you rather than the typical 720-730mm.
You will also want to consider if you’re going to put a larger computer tower on your desk as these can range greatly in depth from 325-450mm.
We would recommend having a desk at a minimum of 700mm deep and your frame should be your tabletop minus 200mm.
