How to arrange a small office for 6 people on 40 square meters?
Fitting six people in 40 square meters is quite a challenge, but in Poznań we have many such premises that work great. The key is not stuffing people with their knees under desk tops, but a wise choice of furniture with specific dimensions. I will show you how to arrange desks and cabinets so that no one bumps their chair against a colleague behind them.
Give up desks with a width of 160 cm
Most companies immediately buy standard 160 cm tops because that's what they saw in catalogs. In 40 meters, it's a mistake that will take away your passage. Choose desks with a width of 122 cm. Those missing 38 cm at each station will allow you to put in a shelf for documents or an extra chair for a client. Six desks at 122 cm will take a total of 7.32 meters in length instead of almost ten. That's a huge difference in a small room.
In an office on Dymka street, we saw a layout where desks stood in two rows of three, set back to back. Between them, 114 cm of free space was left for a passage. That's enough to freely move a chair back and not block the way for a person going to the kitchen. It's important to hide cables in gutters under the top. A tangle of wires under feet in such a small space is a simple way to trip and damage equipment worth several thousand PLN.
Every 10 cm less of desktop is an extra place for a cabinet that will hold 14 binders.
Social zone in a corner
In 40 meters you don't have space for a separate dining room, but a kitchenette is essential. Bet on built-in furniture with a width of 147 cm in the darkest corner of the office. You will fit a single-bowl sink, a small under-counter fridge, and a coffee machine there. In March, one of our tenants in Rataje installed shelves above the kitchenette up to the very ceiling at a height of 242 cm. Thanks to this, they hid supplies of printer paper and household chemicals there, which they did not want to keep by the desks.
Instead of a classic dining table, install a bar top by the window with a depth of 42 cm. It serves not only for eating lunch but also as a place for standing work, which really helps with eight hours of sitting. One of the programmers from an office in Jeżyce admitted that changing position for 24 minutes every two hours improved their focus. This is a cheap solution that does not take up precious space in the middle of the room.
Vertical storage and acoustics
Low chests of drawers are the enemy of small square footage. Use the walls. A shelf with a height of 214 cm takes up as much floor space as a bedside table and holds three times more things. In a small office for 6 people, usually about 47-50 large binders accumulate annually. One solid cabinet with sliding doors will do the job. Sliding doors are key – you don't need an extra 60 cm of space in front of the cabinet to open it.
Noise in 40 meters can be tiring when 3 people are talking on the phone at once. Instead of building gypsum walls that are 12 cm thick and take up space, invest in acoustic panels mounted directly to desks. They are only 3.4 cm thick and dampen sound by 23-28 decibels. In June, we helped silence an accounting office – it cost 1,420 PLN, and the working comfort increased perceptibly from day one.
Sliding doors in cabinets save 0.6 m2 of space in front of each shelf.
Costs and specific amounts
Arranging a 40 m2 office for 6 people in Poznań doesn't have to cost a fortune if you don't buy everything in the most expensive showrooms. The real cost of buying six desks, good certified chairs, and one cabinet is about 11,800 PLN net. That's a price for equipment that will last 4-6 years of daily use. I have seen firms that bought armchairs for 190 PLN and after 7 months had to order new ones because the actuators didn't hold height.
With lighting, aim for 500 lux on the desk top. Replacing old fluorescent lamps with LEDs in an office of this square footage costs about 840 PLN, but electricity bills fall by about 32% monthly. Also, remember about sockets. For 6 people you need at least 18 electrical points. (Small note: check in the lease agreement earlier if you can modify the installation without the owner's consent). At Fairofoffers, we always check this for you before signing papers.
