Study (room)

A study, also known as a home office, is a room in a house that is used for paperwork, computer work, or reading. Historically, the study of a house was reserved for use as the private office and reading room of a parent/guardian as the formal head of a household, but studies are today generally used to operate a home business or open to the whole family.^[1]

The study developed from the closet or cabinet of the Renaissance era. From the beginning of the 18th century onwards, increased literacy at the middle-class family level led to the setting aside of closed study and library areas within larger houses. There, commercial work, reading, correspondence, fact-recording and other activities could be undertaken in privacy and silence.^[2] Until well into the 20th century, gender restrictions on social roles made the domestic study an essentially male facility. The 19th-century clergyman would prepare sermons and interview parishioners in his study, and his equally literate wife would undertake her social obligations in a nearby parlour.^[3]

The Internet has led to a transformation of the historic study with its localized functions into the present day home-office. The technological revolution has enabled individuals to engage in remote work while still being productive using the Internet, email, e-commerce, and videotelephony.

Government statistics record that in Britain 4.2 million people worked exclusively from home in 2014; an increase of 31% from the 1998 figure.^[4]

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