I stopped hiding cables the day a guy in Cleveland showed me his painted PVC channel
I used to cram everything behind the desk and call it cable management, until my buddy in Cleveland showed me his $9 setup: a piece of PVC pipe he spray painted to match the wall and screwed under the back edge, and now I'm wondering how many of you are still zip tying to the legs like I was.
Ran into the same thing a couple years back when my desk was against a wall I didn't want to mess up. Went with a cheap cord cover kit from the hardware store, the kind that sticks on and you can paint over. Cable ties lasted about a week before I got sick of looking at them. Painting it to match made way more of a difference than I expected.