Tired of working from home? Rent a desk in London instead. Today’s freelancers have an enviable range of workspace options, from private offices to hot desks and renting desks by the day.
Whether you’re looking for a permanent place to set up your business away from home or you just need to rent a desk in London once or twice a month, you’ll find flexible contracts that allow you to pay for the desk space you need as and when you need it.
With thousands of coworking spaces, shared offices, business centres and hot desk hubs in the city it can be hard to know where to start. But searching for your ideal office space needn’t be overwhelming.
Search on Hubble and you can look for desk space that matches your desired location, budget and the type of office you want to be in.
All the available desk spaces in London that match your criteria will pop up instantly on a map of the city, so you can see, at a glance, where they all are and how much the monthly rental is. Simple.
And if you’re looking for offices with specific facilities, whether that's 24-hour access, bike storage, or phone booths, you can filter results to only include the right ones for you.
There are three main options for renting a desk in London: a hot desk, a fixed desk or a shared desk.
Hot desking gives you the ultimate in desk rental flexibility. You can choose from offices renting out spare desks to freelancers on an ad hoc basis, or look for hot desk space in one of London’s growing number of coworking spaces and shared offices.
Rent a hot desk and you’ll be able to pull up a chair wherever’s free, making use of full office facilities for as long as you need, as often as you want. There are no contracts to tie you down. So if you just need a professional place to work for one day a week – or even an hour a week – hot desking is for you.
It also leaves you free to hot desk right across London, trying out different coworking spaces and hot desk hubs, meeting all kinds of people and possible collaborators along the way.
Why people love hot desking
For some people, hot desking is heaven. Others prefer the stability of having a fixed desk space they can really call their own. A fixed desk gives you access to a private desk that usually comes with built-in storage space, which you won’t often find with hot desks. This gives you room to permanently set up home, with space to store your papers, files and equipment, so you don’t have to lug your laptop to and from work every day. You’ll be given an office key so you’re free to pop in and use your desk space whenever you want – many offices provide 24-hour access.
Why people love fixed desks
Another option is to rent a desk space to share with someone else. With flexi-hours, temping, and more people working part of the week from home these days, businesses are often left with desk space that isn’t fully utilised all week long. With rental prices high in the capital, businesses are keen to avoid desk space going to waste. Inviting freelancers in to share desks, making use of them when they’re free, gives businesses an added income stream while providing a low cost, flexible, fixed desk solution for people who only want a desk part-time. For insurance reasons, not all offices allow desk sharing, but it’s common with smaller sublets.
Why people love desk sharing
If you’re hot-desking you’re limited in how much you can personalise your space, as you have to respect the fact that someone else will be working there next week, or even the next day. Whenever you’re sharing desk space you want to keep it clean, tidy and ready for someone else to use after you.
If you’re looking for a more customisable space, fixed desks give you much more leeway to personalise with plants, pictures and more permanent decor. If you truly want a place to call your own that you can carve out to showcase your brand, think about renting a private office.
If you’re hot desking you’ll find that the majority of coworking spaces and shared offices provide you with locker space to store your bits and pieces securely. More often than not this in included in your rental price, but they may charge for it as an extra add-on.
The majority of fixed desks come with built-in secure storage and laptop drawers so you can lock away computer equipment, files and external hard drives.
When you’re renting your own office privately it’s usually up to you to sort out your own security. The beauty of hot desks, fixed desks and shared desks is that all that’s already taken care of. Whoever manages the building will have security in place around the clock, and the cost for security staff and insurance is all included in your rental price.
Of course. If you want more privacy, you’ll find one-person private offices of all sizes available across the city - just tick the ‘private office’ box and select ‘one desk’ on your Hubble search.
Choosing a one-person office doesn’t have to mean a life of solitude either. There are plenty of private offices available within coworking spaces and shared offices, so you get all the networking and social benefits of coworking, but your own professional, private space to focus on work.