For some, a home office is little more than a spot to pay bills. For others, it's a primary workspace, a place to run a business or meet clients. But in all well-planned offices, function drives form.

Function plays into whether you choose a quiet spot or something more in the household flow, says Lisa Kanarek, the Philadelphia-based author of four books on home-office issues, the most recent of which is "Home Office Solutions: Creating a Space That Works for You" (Rockport, $15.99).

Still, Kanarek says, basic rules apply. "It shouldn't be in a high-traffic area. One of my least-favorite spaces is the kitchen, unless you have a desk you can close off. And that should just be for paying bills," not activities requiring more concentration.

On the other hand, "you shouldn't be so isolated you can't keep an ear open for the kids," she says, "or don't feel like working there."

Coming up with the right square footage, though, can take creativity, as Barbara Link discovered.

"Quality of life is the real reason to be on my own," says Link, referring to the public-relations business she runs out of her one-bedroom Penn Valley, Pa., condo.

First, she tried running it from her bedroom, then from the living room — neither with much luck. "It kept me up at night," Link says of the bedroom arrangement. Even tucked away in a corner of the living room behind a sofa, work was still there.

So with help from her interior-designer stepbrother, she carved out a less-obtrusive niche by gutting a hall closet.

Link sprang for a large desk that could be customized to fill the nearly 9-by-6-foot windowless space.

"I need a good deal of surface space to spread out all my papers, and good light because I spend a lot of time reading and writing," Link says.

Lighting was installed in the ceiling and built in under the shelf of the hutch she purchased to make the most of the vertical space.

Link bought a $300 task chair that's "been worth every penny because I spend a lot of time in it."

"The beauty of working from home," says Kanarek, "is that you can personalize your office to match your taste, so you enjoy going to work every day."

For a couple in their late 20s, creating two home offices meant incorporating their mid-century-modern tastes — a challenge they put to interior designer Michael Shannon.

The wife is a University of Pennsylvania graduate student writing her dissertation. The husband works for a nonprofit and often takes work home; he also uses his office to pay bills.

Shannon needed to set the stage for their furnishings but "didn't change the basic vocabulary of the house."

He also needed to accommodate thousands of books in their offices — the pair are big readers.

A contractor built bookcases into recesses in the walls of both offices, then partially covered them with bright sliding panels — fuchsia in the husband's second-floor office, two shades of green in the wife's.

In her just-finished third-floor office, the curved lines of a new Mirra task chair by Herman Miller echo the curves of a vintage yellow fiberglass Eames chair and a Jonathan Adler vase. The more angular lines of a mid-century Swiss task lamp resonate with a vintage Thomas Moser drafting table on which her laptop rests.

Now the place "feels like it belongs to people their age," Shannon says. "It's not dowdy anymore."

People tend to integrate home offices into rooms with other functions rather than put them into dedicated spaces, Kanarek says. Some use bookcases as a divider, or simply put a workstation in a corner. Others close everything up in a computer armoire so it's out of sight after work.

Such blended spaces are nothing new, of course, but laptops and flat-panel monitors have made them easier to achieve. With less bulk to accommodate, there's less to hide, so a workspace can more readily be created in a variety of settings.

The Ciraolos incorporated a home office into their family room when they expanded the finished basement. The room, done up in pale seashore hues, contains the entertainment center and adjoins the laundry room.

"We pretty much live down here," says Debbie Ciraolo, a food-service worker. "I may be down here doing the wash and drying it, and being on the computer and looking up things."

Son Rick, 17, spends the most time online, checking homework assignments and sports news, instant-messaging friends and playing games.

Ciraolo's husband, Tony, who's employed with Philadelphia's Redevelopment Authority, runs a pest-control business from the home office, updating inventory, setting appointments and doing his billing there.

Why put the office in the family room?