Office Space per Employee: The Number to Plan On
Use 175 rentable square feet for each employee as the planning figure. It is an all-in number: the desk, plus that person's slice of the conference rooms, call booths, kitchen, front desk and hallways. Teams that sit close together at shared tables can work at about 140, and firms that give most people a private office need about 225. For 30 employees that means roughly 5,250 square feet as a standard layout, 4,200 packed tightly or 6,750 with offices. There is no legal minimum per worker under federal rules, including OSHA's; building and fire codes limit occupancy instead.
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Size an office for my teamUpdated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group
Where 175 square feet goes
The desk is the small part. An open workstation occupies around 60 square feet. Roughly one third of any floor is circulation: aisles and hallways. What remains goes to shared rooms. A standard plan provides a meeting room for every eight to ten employees and two call booths for every twelve, then a kitchen, a front desk and storage.
So a number far under 175 is reached by removing rooms, and a team that lives on video calls feels that loss first.
Which layout is yours
- Dense, about 140 square feet each: mostly engineers at shared benches, with only a few closed rooms.
- Standard, 175: the usual choice for a startup or a growing company, open seating with a complete set of conference rooms.
- Office-heavy, about 225: legal, accounting and investment practices, and other teams where most people work behind a door.
Private offices cost more to build than open seating, since each one adds walls and a glass front. Decide how open the floor will be before the design work begins.
Hybrid teams and growth
A hybrid schedule saves less space than people expect. Shared desks cut the number of workstations, but the team then wants more rooms to meet in, and a typical hybrid office ends up 10 to 20 percent smaller than a full-time one.
Hiring pushes in the opposite direction. A team with open roles usually leases 15 to 25 percent above what its current headcount requires, or secures an expansion right in the lease. Leasing for a team that will double covers how to buy room without paying for empty desks.
Rentable is not usable
New York landlords charge by the rentable square foot, a measure that counts part of the building's common areas along with your own floor. What you can actually furnish is 15 to 25 percent smaller. The 175 figure is a rentable number, so it lines up with the way floors are advertised and priced. Rentable and usable square feet explains the gap.
Floors that fit a team of 30
Live from our listings · 6 of the 22, smallest firstA team of 30 plans on about 5,250 square feet at 175 a person. 22 floors on our book sit in the range that fits, 5,250 to 9,450 square feet, asking $43 to $125 per square foot per year on the 21 with a published rent.
- Floors
- 22
- Sizes
- 5,250-9,000 sq ft
- Asking rent
- $43-$125 / sq ft
- 276 Fifth Avenue, 9th Floor 5,500 sq ft $52/sq ft Flatiron about 31 people
- 503-511 Broadway, Penthouse 5,552 sq ft $125/sq ft SoHo about 32 people
- 540 Broadway, Entire 2nd Floor 6,350 sq ft $85/sq ft SoHo about 36 people
- 32 Old Slip, Partial 32nd Floor 6,997 sq ft $64/sq ft FiDi about 40 people
- 50 Greene Street, 3rd Floor 7,300 sq ft $98/sq ft SoHo about 70 people
- 137 East 25th Street, 6th Floor 8,308 sq ft $43/sq ft Flatiron about 47 people
The full guide
This page is the short answer. The long one, with the numbers worked through, is here:
Related topics
- Renting Office Space in Chelsea: Costs, Floors and Fit
- Tenant Representation in NYC: What the Service Covers
- Choosing a Commercial Real Estate Broker: What to Check First
- How to Find Office Space in Manhattan When the Team Is Growing
How many square feet do 150 employees need?
Around 26,250 rentable square feet on the standard figure. Seated densely, the same company fits in about 21,000, and with mostly private offices it needs about 33,750. The shape of the floor matters too: where the elevators, columns and windows sit changes how many people fit, so treat any result as a range.
Does any law set a minimum office size per employee?
Not at the federal level, and OSHA has no such standard. The limits that do apply come from building and fire codes, which set a maximum occupancy for the floor and the exits it must have, and from accessibility rules on clearances. An architect reviews the layout for all of these ahead of filing.
Does a tech startup need less space per person than a law firm?
Usually, yes. Engineers at open benches can work comfortably at about 140 square feet each. A practice where most professionals have their own office plans closer to 225, and higher still if it needs client meeting rooms or file storage.
How do I turn headcount into a monthly rent?
Multiply headcount by 175 for the square feet, multiply that by the asking rent, which is quoted for a year, and divide by twelve. The result is base rent; electricity and other charges come on top. The office space calculator runs the same sum against current listings and shows which floors fit.
Talk to a broker
Want this answered for your team?
Tell us three things: team size, timing, budget. A first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, with the asking rent on every floor that publishes one.
- Within the houra broker reaches out during business hours, no automated triage
- On your sidewe work for you on your search, and the landlord usually pays our fee
- Open pricingasking rent published for 46 of 49 floors, size and address for all
- 300+ officesdelivered in New York, 2M+ sq ft leased
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