How to make friends working from home starts with replacing what an office did for free: it showed you the same faces every week without anyone having to plan it. Put one or two fixed appointments with people into your working week, such as a Tuesday at the same coworking desk or a lunchtime class, and treat them like meetings you can't move. Your flexible daytime helps, because you can get to places office workers can't.
Nobody is asking you to give up working from home. You need to rebuild the low-level human contact that came with the commute, then point some of it at people who might become friends. This guide includes a sample week and the exact words for people you keep seeing but have never spoken to.
The short answer
- The gap is real. Gallup reported that 25% of fully remote employees experienced loneliness a lot of the previous day, against 16% of on-site workers.
- Replace the familiar faces first. Brief contact with people you half know is what the office gave you, and it goes with happier days.
- Same place, same day. A different cafe every day means nobody sees you twice.
- Spend your commute on people. Working from home saves about 72 minutes a day on average.
- Daytime is your advantage. Mid-morning and lunchtime groups are open to you, and closed to anyone stuck at a desk in town.
Remote work loneliness has a specific cause
In Gallup's 2024 workplace report, 25% of fully remote employees said they had experienced loneliness a lot of the previous day, compared with 21% of hybrid workers and 16% of people working only on site (Gallup, 2024). That's a snapshot of different workers, so it can't prove remote work is the cause. It does match what a lot of people notice about a year into life at the kitchen table.
What most people lose is the low-level contact: the colleague who asks about your weekend, the nod in the lift, the person who always reaches the kettle first. Researchers call these weak ties, and they matter more than they sound. Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn found that students felt happier and more connected on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual, and that weak ties were linked to well-being in daily life more broadly (Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014). In a separate experiment, people who had a warm, brief chat with a barista reported better mood than people who aimed to be as efficient as possible (Sandstrom and Dunn, 2014).
Work networks shrink in a similar way. A study of 61,182 US Microsoft employees found that company-wide remote work left collaboration networks more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between groups (Yang and colleagues, 2021). Microsoft's summary says the share of collaboration time spent with people in other groups fell by about 25% (Microsoft Research). You keep your close team and lose the people on the edges, who are often the ones you'd have had lunch with.
Remote worker, no friends: why the usual fixes disappoint
"Work from a cafe." Good for your mood, but it does little for friendship if it's a different cafe each time. Nobody gets the chance to recognise you.
"Get a coworking pass." An occasional day pass buys you a desk among strangers in headphones. A fixed day works far better. Choose Tuesdays and the same desk, and the Tuesday regulars gradually become your office.
"Use chat more" or "do a virtual coffee". These keep a team working, and they do less for friendship. The University of Kansas's summary of Jeffrey Hall's friendship research says hours spent working together counted for less than hanging out (University of Kansas, 2018). A video call about the roadmap is still work.
"See people in the evening." After a day alone at a desk you often want company and lack the energy to go and find it. Put people inside your working day, while you still have something left.
Spend your commute on people
Working from home hands you time. Across 27 countries, researchers put the average saving at 72 minutes on a day worked from home, and they found that about 40% of the time saved went back into work (Aksoy and colleagues, 2023). Take some of that back. Thirty minutes each working day, spent somewhere with other people, comes to two and a half hours a week. Hall estimated about 50 hours together to become casual friends (Hall, 2018), so with the same few people you'd get there in about five months. We've done the rest of the arithmetic in how long it takes to make a friend.
You also have something office workers don't: the middle of the day. A lunchtime swim, a mid-morning language class or a Tuesday volunteer shift is out of reach for someone at a desk in town. The people there are a useful mix of other remote workers, freelancers, shift workers, new parents and retired people. Some of them will be 30 years older than you, which is no bad thing.
You may worry that talking to strangers will wreck your focus. In field experiments with commuters on trains and buses, people told to connect with a stranger reported a more positive experience than people told to keep to themselves, and it didn't make the commute less productive. Others, asked to predict the result, expected solitude to be more enjoyable (Epley and Schroeder, 2014). A ten-minute chat at the coffee machine is unlikely to cost you much.
How to make friends working from home: a sample week
This is one example. Swap in whatever exists near you, and keep the principle: each fixture happens at the same time, with the same people.
| Day | Fixture | Who you'd see |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Walk to the same coffee place before your first call | The person who makes your coffee |
| Tuesday | Coworking day, same desk, lunch in the kitchen | The Tuesday regulars |
| Wednesday | Lunchtime class or swim | The same handful of faces |
| Thursday | Ten-minute call with a colleague, no work talk | Someone you only know from threads |
| Friday | Work beside a friend, at their place or yours | Someone you already like |
| Saturday | Something with no laptop, such as parkrun, a free weekly timed 5k in many countries | Local people who have never heard of your job |
Don't start with all of it. Build up slowly:
- Weeks 1 and 2: Count how many people you speak to in person in a normal week, so you know your starting point. Add one fixture.
- Weeks 3 and 4: Add a second fixture. Learn two names.
- Weeks 5 and 6: Make one invitation: "I'm getting lunch at one. Want to come?"
- Week 7 onwards: Keep the fixtures that have people in them and drop the rest.
Expect some of this to fizzle. The person you liked will change their days, or the class will end. The fixture is what you're building, so keep it going and the people will turn over around you.
What to say to people you keep seeing
After months at home, even small talk can feel rusty. These lines are short and easy to walk away from.
| The moment | Try saying |
|---|---|
| Same stranger, same cafe, third week | "We've been at these tables at the same time for three weeks, so I feel I should say hello. I'm [name]." |
| Someone at your coworking space | "Does anyone here eat lunch together, or does everyone hide at their desk?" |
| The person who runs the space | "I'm in on Tuesdays and I'd like to know a few people. Who else is here that day?" |
| A colleague who lives in your city | "I've just noticed you're in [city] too. I work from [place] on Thursdays. Want to join me one week?" |
| You've been alone all day and it shows | "Sorry, I've spoken to a cat and two spreadsheets today, so I may talk too much." |
| Moving from nods to a plan | "I'm getting lunch at one. Come along if you need a break from your screen." |
💡 Try this: put your fixtures in your work calendar as busy. If they're marked as optional, a meeting will eat them within a fortnight.
Can remote colleagues become friends?
They can, but work talk won't get you there. You need some time with them when neither of you is working. Try a short call with a clear purpose of having no purpose: "Want a ten-minute call with no agenda? I've realised I know your views on the roadmap and nothing else about you."
Ask about the thing on the shelf behind them. If your company holds a get-together, stay for the dinner and the extra evening, because that's where the loose hours are. If a colleague lives within reach, meet them in person. Some employers will pay for a coworking day, so it's worth asking yours.
Local friends still matter if your team is spread out. Colleagues in another time zone can't have lunch with you.
How to meet people working remotely
Rank your options by how often you'd see the same people. Roughly in order:
- Coworking on a fixed day. Ask about part-time memberships, which many spaces offer.
- A weekly daytime class. Languages, pottery, swimming, yoga. A set course is better than drop-in, because the same people stay for the whole run.
- Daytime volunteering. Food banks, libraries and charities often need weekday help, when other volunteers are at work.
- Local groups for freelancers and remote workers. Meetup is a good place to look, and a repeating group beats a one-off talk.
- Weekend things. A sports team or a walking group gives you people with no link to your job.
- Online spaces. Our guide to making friends online covers small communities and games. If you just need company at your desk, Focusmate pairs you on video with someone elsewhere in the world for a work session, though that won't give you anyone to have lunch with.
Rimeso is another online option, if you use Android. It's a free app that gives you the kind of small talk the kettle used to: a small circle, one question a day, about four minutes, in English or Hindi. It's for conversation. It doesn't arrange meetups, it won't connect you with people in your town, and some circles are quieter than others. It works best as a break in the day, alongside the fixtures above.
If you're hybrid
Hybrid workers sat in the middle of Gallup's figures at 21%, so going in a couple of days a week may not fix this on its own. It depends on what you do when you're there. Treat office days as your social days. Keep deep work for home, ask "Which days are you usually in?" before you choose yours, eat lunch away from your desk, and stay for the coffee after the meeting. An office day spent in headphones is a long commute to a remote day.
When a quiet week becomes something more
If days are passing without a conversation and your mood has started to sink, take that as a sign to contact someone now, before the plan above has had time to work. Call a friend, even briefly. Read how to deal with loneliness, or why you can feel alone around people if your calendar is packed with calls and you still feel cut off. If low mood stays for weeks, talk to a doctor or counsellor. If you're in your first months in a new place as well, our 90-day plan for moving fits alongside this one.
Frequently asked questions
Does working from home make you lonely?
It can. Gallup reported in 2024 that 25% of fully remote employees experienced loneliness a lot of the previous day, against 16% of on-site workers. That does not prove remote work is the cause, and plenty of remote workers are fine, but the daily contact an office provides is easy to lose.
How do remote workers make friends?
They put fixed appointments with people into the working week, such as the same coworking day, a lunchtime class or a volunteer shift. Seeing the same faces repeatedly is what matters, so choose one or two regular places and go every week.
Is a coworking space worth it for making friends?
It can be, if you go on the same day each week and eat lunch away from your desk. Occasional day passes rarely lead anywhere. Before you pay, ask who else is there that day and whether the regulars talk to each other.
Can you become friends with colleagues you have never met?
Yes, but work conversations alone are unlikely to do it. Spend some time talking about things other than work, try a short call with no agenda, and meet in person if you ever get the chance.
Sources
- Gallup, 1 in 5 Employees Worldwide Feel Lonely, 2024
- Sandstrom and Dunn, Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014
- Sandstrom and Dunn, Is Efficiency Overrated?, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2014
- Yang and colleagues, The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers, Nature Human Behaviour, 2021
- Microsoft Research, summary of the same study
- Aksoy, Barrero, Bloom, Davis, Dolls and Zarate, Time Savings When Working from Home, NBER Working Paper 30866, 2023
- Epley and Schroeder, Mistakenly seeking solitude, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2014
- University of Kansas, How to make friends? Study reveals how many hours it takes, 2018
- Jeffrey A. Hall, How many hours does it take to make a friend?, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2018
A small circle that actually gets you.
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