If you could have a new stamp desk/work area any way you ...

@stainlessb , my desk is a door blank. I purchased an unfinished door, stained it, put a coat of poly on it and then rested the whole thing on a pair of sawhorses I made. There is nothing underneath except space for my chair, a powerstrip and a couple of paperbags to hold my paper and plastic scraps that eventually will go in the recycle bin. I have 4 book shelves to the left and right and an old desk behind me and near the entrance to the room that holds other stamp related stuff and a small side table that has my scanner/printer.

The blank door surface is long and wide and gives me lots of room to work.

Here is my desk cluttered with Morocco stamps this evening...

It is a metric straightedge that I use for measuring stamp sizes. I also use it for cutting stamp mounts. I use a rolling blade, the yellow-handled item above my tongs, to cut mounts on the green cutting mat underneath the stamp stock cards and pages.

It is hard. The brand name is OLFA Rotary Mat and it and the blade come together. It is used for crafts and sewing but I have found that the rotary blade in conjunction with my straightedge/ruler makes for a very accurate way of cutting stamp mounts to the correct size. If you google OLFA Rotary mat the Ad page for the company should be at the top of your search results.

stainlessb - this is an interesting topic for a thread!
These considerations are obviously down to personal preference. I have had lots of different "stamp work stations" over the years, and have learned what I want and do not want. I have recently moved into my new stamp room, so I had the chance to tailor-suite it to fit my preference. (LINK) My priorities were:

Workdesk
First and foremost a HUGE open desk. This in my opinion one of those cases where bigger is actually better! If your room/space allows for a huge desk that is. I made my desk to fill the entire length of the small room, so it is 320cm by 100cm wide. With a huge desk one can allow to have several feeder albums, catalogs, boxes, printers and all the rest of it available simultaneously. In my case I can even tidy up half of the desk, and it is room for both me and my brother barbu to do stamping at the same time, side-by-side. Nothing beats the company of a fellow stamping buddy while stamping 
The original post asks for what kind of surface of the desk. Down to personal taste off course. Personally I do not like it white, as all the strong light needed will reflect and glare in your eyes. I have a wooden desk, however have a completely black desk pad (LINK) where I am working. The black background (and good lighting) is ideal for seeing watermarks mostly even without the need of watermark liquid, and the black background is also good for assessing stamp perforations/quality.
It is asked about a backboard versus open desk. I opted on an open desk, so that a backboard would not make a conflict for the PC monitors or did not need the monitors to be installed at an elevation above the desk. Better to have the monitors as low to the desk as possible so one do not need to lift your head (and strain the neck).

Lighting
When looking at other collectors workplaces one thing strikes me as often not being prioritized - lighting - lots of lighting. And even more importantly - stamp collectors should not just pick any kind of indoor lighting. Regular indoor lighting is 'warm' to give a 'cozy' feel, meaning it is yellowish/reddish, at 3000 Kelvin or less. That light shouldn't be used for stamping activities! It makes it impossible to see the color shades correctly, as the light spectrum simply doesn't support it. The only light allowed in a stamping cave should be 'daylight' sources at 6500 Kelvin. This is the only light that can expose the true colors of a stamp, as the spectrum complete and 'white'. My cave is fitted with only 6500K sources - and several 10.000's candelas of it. It is so bright in there that it is brighter than a sunny day outside, like a greenhouse. My wife only refers to it as the 'cannabis plantation'.  I often read collectors are struggling to see shades, and I am wondering - do they have the correct light source?
Again, an open desk is vital for me, so I do not have any lamps standing on the desk - all lamps are in the ceiling directly above or lamps with flexible arms hanging from the shelf above.

Shelves and cabinets
I do not need paintings on my walls - the stamps are art in their own right! So I would rather fill the wall behind me with a huge shelf, within arms length of your workplace. Size requirement is obviously depending of the scope of your collection. WW collectors - like myself - definitively needs lots of it. I also find it handy to have shelves or cabinets above your desk where your are seated, to allow for immediate accessible storage of things like catalogs, mounts, 'A-Z feeder-envelope-archival-boxes',  cardstock, sheet protectors and all the other accessories needed for stamp nuts like us.
I have a few file drawers on wheels below my desk. These can easily be rolled out at the side of my chair and also serve as supporting tables, so I have available desks both at front, left and right   However I would not like to have permanently fixed tables at left and right, because when sorting large loads of stamps all over the desk these will obstruct movement.

Workstation
PC and monitors where seated. Monitors preferable fixed to the wall on (on flexible bracket) so that the work desk itself is kept as open as possible. (Which reminds me I need to fix my own monitors soon...). The PC situated away from the desk itself. Preferable only a keyboard and mouse on your desk, cordless so it can be removed completely when sorting loads of stamps! I never seem to get enough free space, so everything that doesn't strictly need to be on my desk (permanently) will not be there!! That means my desk normally has nothing permanently on it but the black desk pads.  My scanner is sitting on a tiny custom made shelf above the corner of the desk, but can easily be lifted down on the desk itself if and when needed.

Well, that was my experiences and recommendations for a perfect stamp cave. Sorry for not keeping it short and sweet!! It is a very important part of stamping though, so consideration to these issues will make stamping even more enjoyable!!!

Gee Angore ! A tidy stamp room WOW !



Is any work ever done there?  

Thanks hrdoktorx . Yes, proper lighting is alpha-omega for proper studies of our small beauties! At least if studying shades.

For anyone interested in proper lighting - please allow me to share some other important aspect to look for. In addition to the temperature of the light - which should be daylight/6500K for stamping - it is also important to consider the 'Ra' factor, color rendering index. It reflects the quality of the light in terms of if the spectrum of the light is evenly distributed in the 'visible' range of colors. Cheap/low quality light sources have a low color rendering index, which means that the frequency distribution is uneven and thus the light is missing or weak on some frequencies, and stronger on others. This would from a stamping perspective mean that the colors we can see reflected from the stamp is false, as there are some frequencies missing from the light source, so the stamps simply cannot reflect them either. And the opposite, if the light source has an over-rich emission in "red frequencies" the stamps will appear more red than they really are.
I have in particular noticed myself the difficulty to differentiate between subtle ultramarine shades from blue. In a poor light source the ultramarine might simply look blue - or vice verca, the red elements of ultramarine might be 'over-exposed' to look more ultramarine than it really is!

A good quality light source should have Ra above 0.90. Normally you will not find that in your local grocery store, so need to go to a more specialized shop - and obviously there are lots of options online. I ended up with fluorescent light bulbs as my main light source, as these are the best for this purpose and which at the same time give plenty of light ( measured in candela). Look for fluorescent light bulbs with the code '965'. The '9' indicates that Ra is at 0.90 or above, the '65' indicates 6500 Kelvin - or daylight. EXAMPLE

Unfortunately I have been struggling to find LED RU10 bulbs that match the ideal '965'. If anybody does, please share