How I Built My Home Studio from Scratch

Part 5: Choosing the Layout and Defining the Space

Once the room was clear enough to work with properly, the next step was deciding how it was actually going to function.

This was the stage where it stopped being an empty shell and started becoming a real studio in practical terms. I had already thought a lot about the layout before moving in, but now I could test those ideas against the actual space instead of just guessing.

That meant thinking about where the desk would go, how the room would flow, what needed to be within reach, and how to use the walls and floor space without making everything feel cramped.

But it was also the point where I had to make some clearer decisions about what this room was for — and what it wasn’t.

IMAGE 1: Early layout phase. Working out where the desk, speakers, and recording space would actually sit in the room. Not finished, but starting to take shape.

One of those decisions was not trying to use the room to store the motorbike as well. That probably could have been made to work in a technical sense, but it would have changed the whole room. It would have turned it into a compromise space, part studio and part storage, and that would have affected every other decision about furniture, equipment, access, layout, and day-to-day use.

I didn’t want that.

I wanted this room to function properly as a workspace and studio, not just as a place where a few music things happened to live alongside everything else. So the layout wasn’t just about where to put a desk. It was about defining the purpose of the room.

IMAGE 2: Rough layout thinking at the time. Not a precise plan, but a way of working out zones — where to work, where to record, and what needed to stay out of the room.

Once that became clear, everything else got easier. What stayed in the room. What didn’t. Where the main working position should be. How to leave enough space to move, think, and work without constantly fighting the room.

This was one of the most important stages of the whole process.

Because a good room starts with clear choices.

Before acoustic treatment, before gear, before decoration, before any of the fun stuff, the room needed a purpose.

Every extra function you add to a room makes it worse at its main job.

And for me, that purpose had to be simple.

It needed to be a studio.

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How I Built My Home Studio from Scratch