If you’ve spent the past year or so balancing a laptop and a monitor (the one you purloined from the building when the last lockdown was imposed) on top of a makeshift desk and researching chairs that won’t induce crippling back pain, you’ve probably forgotten what it’s like to work in an office.

Not that offices are necessarily the most productive places to work. Then again, neither are home offices, especially when you have children, pets, houseplants and other dependants to attend to. “I reckon we’re all in a really good position to give some constructive commentary on exactly what isn’t a conducive office space,” says Ms Nicky Guymer, founder of interior design firm Someday Studio and deputy editor of 91 Magazine. “For me, having spent the past year working in the same house as my husband every damn day, I would say working in the same house as your husband every, damn day.”

Apart from banishing your loved ones, her office must-haves include good storage, a large desk and, rather surprisingly, mess. “This might seem at odds with the storage and all, but never trust an empty desk,” she says. “That person is either a master delegator or a psychopath. Probably both and best avoided.”

Architect and MR PORTER Style Council member Mr Teo Yang also has a few pointers. “Today’s office design is all about breaking the rules,” he says. He recommends looking to hotels or cafés for inspiration for your own space, as well as investing in decent lighting. When it comes to corporate offices, it’s important they embody the company’s ethos and persona. With those tips in mind (and the fact that we can’t stop thinking about the sky-high office in Netflix’s Halston), we picked out a few on-screen examples that might inspire your own renovation and asked the experts for their take.

We’re not sure we’ve ever seen Suits’ Harvey Specter doing any lawyering at this desk, but his corner office in the legal drama isn’t designed to be a workspace conducive to actual work. It’s a power play, pure and simple. For Ms Guymer, he may as well be saying, “I am important, I am scary and people will think I have a huge… paycheque. I’ll also sit here late into the night, surrounded by walnut veneer, so I can look like I work really hard and then spin around, recline a little, stretch my hands behind my head and survey the city, which I own the ass of. Also, I didn’t pick a thing in this office, but don’t even think about touching it.”

This isn’t intimidating in the slightest. “Imagine you’ve turned up for an interview and you get shown into a blood-red office,” says Guymer. It’s certainly another way to show who is in charge (as is the objectively NSFW painting), but there’s something about the expansive white desk and filing cabinets in this psychological thriller that appeals to the productivity hacker in all of us. Is it cosy? No, but just think of how busy and important you’d feel sitting here. Another plus? “Those sparkly water glasses behind her,” says Guymer. “They never get used, but it’s some poor sod’s job to come in and replace them every single day just so they remain sparkly.”

If you thought Nocturnal Animals was menacing, then you haven’t caught up with Devs, a sci-fi thriller series about the mysteries surrounding a fictional, but still nefarious, tech giant. Rather than borrow the bean bags from similar businesses, the production designers opted for something far more sinister: an imposing concrete cuboid in the middle of a clearing through a forest with endless glass panels and a lethal floating elevator. There’s also a lot of gold, which prompts a serious question from new starters – is this the set of a music video or a workplace? Nonetheless, Teo Yang is a fan of the industrial accents and describes the effect as “radical, but composed” and praises the carefully planned lighting, which highlights the divided space.

The office of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (or is it Sterling Cooper & Partners at this point in Mad Men’s run? We’ve lost track) is the one Guymer wishes she worked in – and not just because there’s a realistic prospect you’ll be offered a glass of hard liquor before 11.00am. It’s more to do with the angled furniture in Don Draper’s office, which, though lovely to look at, is just uncomfortable enough to ensure visitors don’t linger too long. The personal touch, she says, also stands out. “Although it was probably his secretary who put them up on the wall, I love the children’s drawings and Mets flag as a nod to life outside the office, even when it’s somewhere as sharp as this,” she says. Yang is on the same page. “Expression of personality is always a great start to a distinctive office,” he says.

Is pink an acceptable colour scheme for an office? Mr Spike Jonze’s candy-coloured sci-fi romance Her makes an excellent case. The Perspex dividers are a particular hit with Nicky Guymer. “Look how much fun it is to work here,” she says. “Carving up the open-plan floor space and creating breakout areas, it’s very Google. I’m vibing off this colour palette. Who says Perspex has to be clear?” It’s the open-plan working space, she says, that allows for such a solid graphic statement, while copy-and-paste additions such as the black lamps on every desk bring some harmony.

Guymer’s first impressions of the US TV drama Billions went a little like this: “Super tidy desk. Double screen. Important numbers. Charts on an upward trajectory. Oh, and I’m so successful, I wear New Balance to the office and it isn’t even dress-down Friday,” she says. “As I continually attest, clutter-free desks are boring. The real fun is happening elsewhere.” Teo Yang has a kinder take, explaining that the neutral colour scheme and stark furniture make this feel timeless and create a solidly contemporary aesthetic. That said, we’re not sure that plush cream carpet will stay quite so cream for long.

“This is by far my favourite workplace set-up,” says Guymer. The panorama of the busy New York City skyline undoubtedly makes it, but not every one has the luxury of a 12,000sq ft (yes, that’s how big it was in real life) 21st-floor office. Not that it appeared to matter that much to the designer Roy Halston, played in a show-stopping turn in the Netflix miniseries with Mr Ewan McGregor. “Tellingly, the pinboard of designs is of far more importance to Halston, blocking, as it is, half his view,” says Guymer. “You can just tell this guy’s going to be interesting, even if, like Ewan McGregor before he was cast in the title role, you have no idea who Halston was.”

The people featured in this story are not associated with and do not endorse MR PORTER or the products shown