More people see your home office than your living room — a few square meters of it, over your shoulders, several times a day. It is the one room where 'how it looks on camera' is a legitimate design constraint, and it changes the usual advice in specific ways.
Face the window, don't back it
Daylight on your face is the best webcam upgrade that costs nothing; a window behind you turns you into a silhouette no camera setting fixes. Desk facing the window is ideal, window to the side is fine. This one placement decision outranks every purchase on the list.
Design the frame behind you
The camera crops a narrow slice of wall — design that slice deliberately. A shelf with a few real objects, one piece of art, a plant: enough to look intentional, not enough to be studied by everyone in the meeting. Keep doors out of frame if the household contains other people, and keep the bed out of frame if the room allows it at all.
The unglamorous wins
If the budget forces a choice, the chair beats the desk — you sit on one and merely touch the other. A rug and curtains are secretly acoustic treatment; hard empty rooms are why calls sound like stairwells. And cable management is ten dollars of velcro that upgrades every single thing in the frame.
Render the corner before the desk arrives
The office tool turns a photo of the spare corner into a working setup — desk, chair, storage and lighting placed for the space that is actually there. Try the desk on each wall by prompt before anything ships, then let the shopping list price the setup from real stores.