Office Space Calculator

Written byOleh Soloninupdated 5 October 2026

Employees

Layout

Meeting rooms

Kitchen and break area, m²

Corridors and circulation, %

Rent per m² a year

Result

Total, m²206.3
Desks, m²120
Shared areas, m²86.3
Per person, m²10.3
Rent a month$30,937.50
What matters
Russian workplace rules require at least 4.5 m² for a desk with a computer, and that is a floor rather than a design target.

Desks are only about half of it

Calculates the floor area an office needs for a headcount, including meeting rooms, kitchen and circulation, and the rent it implies.

Multiply the headcount by the space per desk and you get a number roughly half the size of the office you actually need. Meeting rooms, a kitchen, corridors and the space to walk behind a chair are not optional extras.

Circulation adds a share on top of everything else — 25 percent by default here, as a planning assumption. Leaving it out is why a floor plan that looked comfortable on paper turns out to have no way past the printer.

How to use

Enter the head count and pick the layout.
Give the number of meeting rooms and the kitchen area.
Set the circulation percentage — corridors and the routes to desks.
Enter the rent per square metre to see the monthly figure.

What the layout decides

Each row is a run of this calculator for 20 staff with two meeting rooms, a 15 m² kitchen and 25 percent circulation. Only the allowance per desk changes.

Between the dense and the cellular layout lie 112 square metres and 16,875 of monthly rent at a rate of 1,800. And per person the figures come out at 8.4 and 14.1 rather than the nominal 4.5 and 9: shared space and circulation add nearly as much again as the desk itself.

Runs of this calculator for 20 staff with two meeting rooms, a 15 m² kitchen and 25% circulation.
Layout	Per desk	Desks	Shared	Total	Per person	Monthly rent
Dense	4.5 m²	90 m²	78.8 m²	168.8 m²	8.4 m²	25,313
Open plan	6 m²	120 m²	86.3 m²	206.3 m²	10.3 m²	30,938
Cellular	9 m²	180 m²	101.3 m²	281.3 m²	14.1 m²	42,188

What this calculator shows

The total area and the split between desks and shared space
The area per person once everything is counted
The monthly rent at the rate you enter

What to keep in mind

Open plan is taken as 6 m² a person, cellular offices as 9 and dense layouts as 4.5.
A meeting room is counted as 15 m², which suits four to six people. A room for twelve needs closer to 30.

FAQs

How much space does one employee need?

Around 6 m² of desk area in open plan and 9 in a cellular office. With the shared areas of the example, 20 people come to about 8.4 m² each in dense seating, 10.3 in open plan and 14.1 in cellular offices.

Is there a legal minimum?

4.5 m² for a permanent workstation with a flat-panel screen is the figure in clause 249 of Russia's sanitary rules SP 2.2.3670-20; check which version of the rules is in force on the date you plan for. It is a floor, not a target for a comfortable office.

How much circulation should I allow?

There is no universal share: the floor plan and the rules for walkways and evacuation set it. The example takes 25 percent as a working figure; floors with columns or an odd shape need more.

Does hybrid working change the calculation?

Yes. With hot desking the desk count follows peak attendance rather than headcount, but meeting rooms usually need to grow, not shrink.

Why is the per-person figure double the allowance?

Because meeting rooms, the kitchen and circulation sit on top of the desk. In an open plan the 6 square metre allowance becomes 10.3 per person — shared space takes nearly as much as the desks do.

What counts as circulation?

Corridors, the routes to desks and everything people walk through rather than sit in. Twenty-five percent is a share of desks plus shared space; in an awkwardly shaped floor it runs higher.

Worked example

An office for twenty

Input: 20 people, open plan, 2 meeting rooms, 15 m² kitchen, 25 percent circulation

Output: about 206 m², or 10.3 m² a person

Note: The desks are 120 m² of that. Everything else — meetings, kitchen and corridors — is the other 86, which is why the per-person figure ends up almost double the desk allowance.

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