After so many kind comments about this desk, here it is in full: the exact dimensions, the material and leg choices, and the three things I got wrong. If you're stuck planning a desk of your own, the measurements below should save you some guesswork.
The Blueprint
The desk is a birch plywood slab measuring 160cm long by 75cm wide, with a 12cm-thick sandwich layer built into the underside. That interlayer does double duty: it stiffens the top and swallows books, notebooks, and small gear that would otherwise pile up on the surface. The drawings break it into compartments of roughly 382mm, 564mm, and 382mm along the length.
Why birch? The wood grain reads warm up close and feels good under the hands, and it can be recolored later with a skin-feel film if you want a different finish. The legs lean industrial — hairpin-style and mobile, with casters — chosen mainly because the whole desk can be rolled anywhere in the room. And on width: after living with it, 75cm has proven a friendly, all-purpose depth for a monitor, laptop, and everything else.
Three Pitfalls Worth Knowing Before You Build
No design survives contact with reality untouched. Three things I'd flag:
1. The birch board is too thin. Over time the middle of the span has sagged slightly under load. A thicker top would have avoided it.
2. The 12cm interlayer is too thick. It eats into knee and elbow clearance, so you end up compensating by raising your chair height. If you're copying the design, this is the number I'd reconsider first.
3. Casters trade stability for mobility. Wheel-mounted legs simply don't feel as planted as fixed ones. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends on how often you actually move the desk — for me it was, but it's a genuine compromise, not a free upgrade.
In day-to-day use the desk holds up well otherwise. Books, notebooks, and a calculator slide into the shelf exactly where a hand reaches for them, cables tuck out of sight behind the monitor, and the casters let the whole setup roll to a new spot when the room needs rearranging.
How It Settled In
Once the books moved in, the interlayer became the quiet workhorse of the desk. Stacks of art and design titles sit in the compartments, paperbacks pile up on top, and the open shelf keeps the work surface from drowning in clutter. The hairpin legs on casters let the desk shift around the room as the light and the layout change — the same mobility that costs a little stability, put to work.
Editor's Notes & Summary
If you're renovating or reworking a desk, these are the numbers the whole design hangs on — take them, adjust the thickness, and build something better.
- Desktop size: 160cm long x 75cm wide
- Board interlayer thickness: 12cm (used to store desktop items)
10 comments
Looks like it’s the 12cm thickness plus 68cm legs — a bit too tall.
May I ask what the overall height is?
Yes, it’s a skin-feel color-change film. Pick one wider than the desktop so you can lay it in a single sheet, then trim the edges with a craft knife.
Did you use color-change stickers on the desktop, or something else? Would love to know.
Waiting for your link.
This is going straight up on 1688.
What font is on your desktop?
I’m honestly scared you’ll sit on the desk.
Same desk? I later added a leg underneath, center and set slightly back.
Bro, this one’s way beyond the syllabus.