Partner Desks: How to Size a Desk for Two People

Working side by side, sharing a study with a partner, or setting up a his-and-hers workspace: it's one of the nicest ways to use a room, and one of the hardest to buy furniture for. Two separate desks shoved together leave a gap, wobble independently and look like an office. A single desk built for two looks like a piece of furniture. The catch is that almost no off-the-shelf desk is wide enough, or the right width for your wall. That's exactly what made-to-measure is for.

How wide does a desk for two need to be?

As a rule of thumb, give each person 110cm to 150cm of their own space, depending on their setup:

• Two laptops: around 220cm is workable, 240cm is comfortable.
• A laptop and a monitor each: aim for 240cm to 280cm.
• A full dual-monitor setup each: you'll want 280cm to 300cm so neither person feels boxed in.

If in doubt, go wider. Two people notice a cramped shared desk far faster than one person does, and an extra 20cm is the difference between elbows clashing and everyone happy. (For the full width-and-depth breakdown, see our desk size guide.)

Depth: the same rules apply

Sitting side by side, depth works exactly as it does for one person: 60cm is tight, 72.5cm is comfortable, and 80cm is generous, especially if you both run monitors and want them pushed back to a healthy distance. For a shared desk, we'd usually nudge you towards 72.5cm or 80cm.

One desk, not two

It's tempting to just push two desks together, but a single made-to-measure top is a different thing entirely:

• No gap or seam down the middle where pens and crumbs live.
• No mismatched heights or independent wobble.
• It reads as furniture, not a corner of an office, which matters in a bedroom or living space.
• One continuous surface to run cables and share a power strip along.

Why made-to-measure is the whole point here

This is where standard sizing falls apart. Partner desks live against a specific wall, in a specific space, and the odds of an off-the-shelf desk being exactly that width are slim. With a made-to-measure top you give us the wall and we build the desk to it: any width from 100cm right up to 300cm, to the centimetre. It fills the space properly, with no awkward gaps at the ends and no overhang to squeeze past.

Before you order

• Measure the wall, corner to corner, and take a couple of centimetres off so it slides in cleanly.
• Check both chairs can pull out, roughly 60cm to 75cm of clearance behind the desk each.
• Think about power early: where the sockets are, and whether you want cables running left, right or centre.
• Monitor arms are your friend on a shared desk. They free up the surface and let each person set their own height.

Built for two, made to fit

Every Grove desk is solid European redwood, made to order in our Margate workshop, in any width from 1 to 3 metres. So a proper desk for two isn't a compromise between two small ones. It's a single, solid, made-to-measure piece built to the exact size of your room.

Sharing a workspace? Design your desk.