When one decides to work from home, he or she most likely will set up a home office – if there is space, of course. When space is tight, a kitchen table may double as a desk.

But how do you make your home “office” comfortable enough to want to spend quality, productive time in it as a professional but not so much that you feel more like napping than working? And what can be done to reduce the distractions that may come with working from home?

Home office and organization experts have a bevy of tips on how to be a productive professional at home, including having a separate space for work and play, picking a properly sized and styled desk and chair, and hooking up to technology sufficient for your needs.

The first thing you need is a proper space to call your “office” – whether it be a small corner of your “big city” apartment somehow cordoned off or a separate room in your suburban home.

“Hopefully, it’s not the kitchen table or the den or something like that that has to do double duty or worse yet, at the end of the day, you have to clean off the kitchen table or make the space … or conform to some other need,” explained Jeff Zbar, founder of ChiefHomeOffice.com and expert on small and home offices. “The ability to work from a home office does not end at 5 o’clock.”

One more important element to creating a successful home office is to minimize distractions – that includes kids, pets and television.

“If you don’t set boundaries of when you need to work, you may not be able to work until late in the evening,” said Lisa Kanarek, a home-office expert and author and founder of WorkingNaked.com.

Kanarek said home workers need to make clear to friends and family that when you are working, that means no interruptions. And save the personal tasks until lunchtime or after work, she added.

“Throwing in a load of laundry before you get to your home office is fine,” she said. “But when one personal task leads to another, you’ll have a day filled with personal tasks and no work.”

One of the biggest mistakes people make when setting up their home office, Zbar said, is setting up shop too close to the “nerve center” of the home. People need to have a vision of what they are trying to accomplish and how their office can help them achieve it. And never forget to plan for expansion.

“If you think small, you’ll be small,” Zbar concluded. “If you treat your home office like an office in the home and you don’t plan for the growth and you don’t plan for the space … if you treat it like you’re a pariah in the workplace, like this office isn’t where it should be, then you will be treated that way by others. You will build that mental stigma.”