How Much Office Space Do I Need Per Person?

How much office space you need per person in London depends almost entirely on layout: roughly 86 to 140 square feet (8 to 13 square metres) per person for open-plan, 135 to 225 square feet (12.5 to 21 square metres) for a private office, and 200 to 400 square feet (18.5 to 37 square metres) for an executive layout. The right number for your team comes from adding up desks, meeting rooms, breakout space, kitchen and reception separately, then applying a circulation uplift on top, not from picking one figure and multiplying it by headcount.

This guide works through that calculation in both sq ft and m², with worked examples for teams of 10, 20 and 40 people, the legal minimum the Health and Safety Executive sets for any UK workroom, and how desk-sharing changes the total once hybrid working enters the picture. It ends with what this space actually costs per desk across London, because flex space here is priced per desk rather than per square foot, and the two numbers are rarely put side by side. The pricing below comes from live listings on myhqspaces.com, a marketplace for coworking, private offices and serviced offices across London.

The three space benchmarks: open-plan, private office and executive

Open-plan offices need the least space per person, private offices need roughly double that, and executive layouts need three to four times as much.

The British Council for Offices’ Guide to Specification puts open-plan density at 8 to 13 sqm (86 to 140 sq ft) per person. The BCO’s own occupier research, Office Occupancy: Density and Utilisation, found a measured average across real UK offices of 9.6 sqm (103 sq ft) per person, down slightly from 9.9 sqm (107 sq ft) in 2013. That figure already includes a share of meeting rooms, breakout space and circulation, not just the desk itself.

Private, cellular offices need more room per head because walls and doors cost space that open-plan floors do not spend. CBRE’s occupier research puts the range at 135 to 225 sq ft (12.5 to 21 sqm) per person, depending on how generous the layout is and how many smaller rooms it is split into.

Executive layouts sit at the top end. A senior office built around a desk, guest seating and a small meeting area typically runs 200 to 400 sq ft (18.5 to 37 sqm) per person, according to commercial fit-out benchmarks (Workbox, 2026). Very low-density executive suites can run higher still, up to 500 sq ft (46 sqm) per person, though that is unusual outside law firms and finance.

How to calculate office space per person: desks, meeting rooms and everything else

The reliable way to size an office is to add up desks, meeting rooms, breakout space, kitchen and reception separately against published benchmarks, then apply a circulation uplift on top, rather than starting from a single per-person total and working backwards.

A workstation, a desk plus the immediate space to pull a chair out and walk past it, takes up 5 to 6 sqm (54 to 65 sq ft) in an open-plan layout, according to the BCO’s Guide to Specification. This guide uses 6 sqm (65 sq ft).

Meeting rooms scale with headcount, not desk count. A widely used planning convention in commercial fit-out guides, including Arcgrove’s and Cubicle by Design’s office space guidance, allows 20 to 25 sq ft (1.9 to 2.3 sqm) per seat. Rooms come in fixed sizes rather than scaling smoothly, so a ten-person team needs one small room, a twenty-person team needs two, and a forty-person team needs three of different sizes.

Breakout space, kitchens and reception each have their own published ranges too. UK office design consultancy Oktra puts breakout and social space at 15 to 30 sq ft (1.4 to 2.8 sqm) per person, a kitchen or tea point at 61 to 187 sq ft (5.7 to 17.4 sqm) as a flat room rather than per person, and front-of-house or reception space at 160 to 900 sq ft (14.9 to 83.6 sqm), also flat rather than per person.

Storage is real but genuinely hard to pin to a single published per-person figure, since it depends entirely on whether a business holds physical stock, paper files or IT equipment on site. This guide does not assign it a fixed number; treat it as a question to ask a space provider directly rather than a line you can budget from a benchmark.

Once desks, meeting rooms, breakout space, kitchen and reception are added together, circulation, corridors and comms rooms still need to be added on top. Oktra puts circulation at 15 to 25% of total floor area for a typical office. The examples below use 20%, the middle of that range.

Meeting rooms, kitchens, storage and reception: sizing the parts that are not desks

Meeting room space scales in fixed steps by seat count, not continuously with headcount, so it is worth planning room by room rather than as a single line item.

Room size	Seats	Approx. space
Huddle room	4	9.2 sqm (99 sq ft)
Meeting room	6	13.8 sqm (149 sq ft)
Meeting room	8	18.4 sqm (198 sq ft)
Boardroom	12	27.6 sqm (297 sq ft)

Kitchen and reception space step up in stages as a team grows rather than adding a fixed amount per extra person.

Worked examples: office space for 10, 20 and 40 people

Adding desks, meeting rooms, breakout space, kitchen and reception separately, then applying a circulation uplift, an open-plan office needs around 137 sqm (1,469 sq ft) for 10 people, 275 sqm (2,960 sq ft) for 20 people, and 543 sqm (5,842 sq ft) for 40 people.

Team size	Desks (6 sqm/65 sq ft each)	Meeting rooms	Breakout (1.9 sqm/20 sq ft per person)	Kitchen	Reception	Programmed subtotal	Total with circulation (+25%)	Per person
10 people	60 sqm (646 sq ft)	9.2 sqm (99 sq ft), one 4-seat room	19 sqm (205 sq ft)	6 sqm (65 sq ft)	15 sqm (161 sq ft)	109.2 sqm (1,176 sq ft)	137 sqm (1,469 sq ft)	13.7 sqm (147 sq ft)
20 people	120 sqm (1,292 sq ft)	23 sqm (248 sq ft), a 4-seat and 6-seat room	38 sqm (409 sq ft)	11 sqm (118 sq ft)	28 sqm (301 sq ft)	220 sqm (2,368 sq ft)	275 sqm (2,960 sq ft)	13.75 sqm (148 sq ft)
40 people	240 sqm (2,583 sq ft)	55.2 sqm (594 sq ft), a 4-seat, 8-seat and 12-seat room	76 sqm (818 sq ft)	17 sqm (183 sq ft)	46 sqm (495 sq ft)	434.2 sqm (4,673 sq ft)	543 sqm (5,842 sq ft)	13.6 sqm (146 sq ft)

This method lands at 13.6 to 13.75 sqm (146 to 148 sq ft) per person, above the BCO’s own measured average of 9.6 sqm (103 sq ft).

These are open-plan totals. A private office layout for the same headcount runs proportionately higher, using CBRE’s 135 to 225 sq ft (12.5 to 21 sqm) per-person range: 1,350 to 2,250 sq ft (125 to 209 sqm) for 10 people, 2,700 to 4,500 sq ft (251 to 418 sqm) for 20 people, and 5,400 to 9,000 sq ft (502 to 836 sqm) for 40 people. An executive layout, at 200 to 400 sq ft (18.5 to 37 sqm) per person, needs 2,000 to 4,000 sq ft (186 to 372 sqm) for 10 people, 4,000 to 8,000 sq ft (372 to 743 sqm) for 20 people, and 8,000 to 16,000 sq ft (743 to 1,486 sqm) for 40 people.

What changes the answer: hybrid working and desk-sharing ratios

Desk-sharing cuts the amount of space a team needs, because it reduces desk count without reducing headcount, and it is the single biggest lever most London teams have.

Hybrid working means fewer people are in the office on any given day than are on the payroll. The BCO’s 2025 review of utilisation data uses 66% as the planning figure for how much of a team is typically present at once, which supports a desk-sharing ratio of roughly seven desks for every ten employees.

Applying a 0.7 ratio to the 20-person open-plan example above changes only the desk portion of the calculation. Fourteen desks, rather than twenty, need 84 sqm (904 sq ft) instead of 120 sqm (1,292 sq ft). Meeting rooms, breakout space, kitchen and reception still have to serve 20 people, so those figures do not move. The new programmed subtotal comes to 184 sqm (1,980 sq ft); with the same 25% circulation uplift, the total comes to around 230 sqm (2,476 sq ft), a reduction of roughly 16% against the fully-desked figure of 275 sqm (2,960 sq ft).

Desk-sharing only delivers that saving if attendance is actually managed. A team that books desks in theory but shows up five days a week regardless will simply run out of seats, and the space that looked adequate on paper turns into a daily scramble for a chair.

The legal minimum: HSE’s 11 cubic metres per person

The legal minimum for any UK workroom is 11 cubic metres of room volume per person, set out in the Approved Code of Practice to the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and published by the Health and Safety Executive.

This figure is measured differently from everything above it. It is a volume, not a floor area, and any part of a room above 3 metres in height is capped at 3 metres for the purpose of the calculation. At a standard 2.4 metre ceiling, 11 cubic metres per person works out to about 4.6 sqm (50 sq ft) of floor space, well below even the leanest open-plan benchmark in this guide.

That gap is the point. The HSE minimum exists to guarantee basic ventilation and freedom of movement, not to describe a workable office. hse.gov.uk is explicit that the figure is a minimum and may be insufficient depending on layout, furniture and the nature of the work. A team that designs to 4.6 sqm (50 sq ft) per person and stops there is not planning an office, it is planning a legal compliance certificate, and the meeting room and storage needs it never accounted for will surface as complaints within the first year.

What this space actually costs per desk in London

London flex space is priced per desk rather than per square foot, and the product type changes the number as much as the postcode: a coworking dedicated desk has a London median of £297 a month, while a private office, the product myhqspaces.com’s London listings are built around, runs £250 to £1,024 a month with a median of £463.

A coworking hot desk in London runs £150 to £400 per desk per calendar month, and a dedicated desk has a London-wide median of £297 (CityHub Offices 2026 guide; CoworkingCafe, Q1 2025), according to our guide to coworking for small teams in London.

Private offices on our London listings run from £250 to £1,024 per person a month, with a median of £463. Every figure below is a private office rate quoted per person per month, so they are comparable with each other.

Operator	Area	Product type	Price (per person/month)
X+ Why – Fivefields	Victoria	Private office	£250
Workspace – Barley Mow Centre	Ealing	Private office	£291
X+ Why – Chiswick Works	Ealing	Private office	£295
X+ Why – People’s Mission Hall	Whitechapel	Private office	£355
Spaces – Farringdon	Holborn	Private office	£395
Regus – City North West Place	Islington	Private office	£399
Mindspace – Hammersmith	Hammersmith	Private office	£450
Runway East – Aldgate East	Whitechapel	Private office	£460
Uncommon – Highbury & Islington	Islington	Private office	£466
Uncommon – Fulham	Hammersmith	Private office	£547
Mindspace – Shoreditch	Shoreditch	Private office	£625
Mindspace – Old Street	Shoreditch	Private office	£650
Runway East – Bloomsbury	Bloomsbury	Private office	£665
Uncommon – Borough	London Bridge	Private office	£750
Uncommon – Holborn	Holborn	Private office	£912
Uncommon – Liverpool Street	City of London	Private office	£1,024

The cheapest sits in Victoria and the most expensive in the City of London, with Mindspace’s Shoreditch building close to the middle at £625 a month.

That £463 median is drawn from the 16 live listings above. Our cost of office space in London guide, which draws on Flexioffices, SHBRE and Scope Office Search data, covers the wider market range for private offices in coworking buildings, £600 to £2,000-plus, in full. Either way, a coworking dedicated desk at a median £297 a month is the cheaper route into a London office under any of these private office figures.

A serviced office, which bundles a private, lockable room with reception, cleaning and utilities into one rate, averages £624 per desk per calendar month across London, according to the same cost of office space in London analysis.

X+ Why’s Fivefields site in Victoria is the outlier at £250 per person a month, 46% below the median, and it is a private office rather than a hot desk. Worth treating as a starting point for a conversation rather than an off-the-shelf rate.

For the full area-by-area breakdown of London office pricing, see our guide to the cost of office space in London. If you are weighing coworking against a private office more generally, our comparison of serviced office vs coworking space walks through where the crossover point usually sits.

How to use this number when you go looking for space

Treat every figure in this guide as a planning estimate to take into a conversation with a space provider, not a number to sign a lease against without a site visit.

Two teams of the same size can need meaningfully different amounts of space depending on how much heads-down focus work they do, how often clients visit, and whether the building’s floor plate is efficient or awkward. A Victorian conversion with a chopped-up floor plan needs noticeably more space than a purpose-built floor for the same headcount, simply because more of it turns into corridor rather than usable room.

Start with the layout that matches how your team actually works, open-plan for teams that collaborate constantly and do not need much privacy, private offices once client confidentiality or focus work matters, executive space only where the role genuinely requires it, then use the worked examples above to get a realistic headcount-to-area figure before you start looking at listings.

To compare live private office and coworking options against these numbers, browse London office listings on myhqspaces.com.

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