Count the desks your floor plate holds
Deduct cabins, rooms and support first, then fill what is left with desk modules.
How this calculator works
The maths is four lines, and we publish all of it:
- Deduct the enclosed rooms. Private cabin = 110 sq ft (a 3.0 × 3.4 m room with a visitor chair). Meeting room = 160 sq ft (an averaged mix of 4-seat, 8-seat and one board table).
- Deduct support and amenity as a percentage of the whole plate: 10% lean, 16% standard, 24% generous. This covers reception, pantry, store, print bay, lockers and the lobby to the washrooms.
- Net open area × the aisle factor = desk footprint available. 0.36 at 1.0 m aisles, 0.30 at 1.2 m, 0.25 at 1.5 m with storage runs. The remainder is aisle and secondary circulation.
- Desks = desk footprint ÷ module footprint, rounded down. Nobody sits at 0.6 of a desk.
| Desk module | Footprint used | Sits in a run of | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 × 600 bench | 7.8 sq ft | 6–8 | Support, sales floors, BPO |
| 1400 × 700 bench | 10.5 sq ft | 6 | The Indian corporate default |
| 1500 × 750 with return | 14 sq ft | 4 | Team leads, design, finance |
| 1800 × 900 manager desk | 17.5 sq ft | 2–4 | Open-plan senior positions |
Footprint is the desk plus its share of the shared bench spine and the modesty screen — it excludes the chair pull-back, which sits inside the aisle allowance.
Why we count desks and not square feet per person
A sq-ft-per-person figure is a leasing number. It tells you how much floor to sign for before you have a drawing. It is the right question at the shortlist stage and we have a separate tool for it — the office space per employee calculator, which works forward from headcount to leasable area.
This tool answers the opposite question, and it comes later: you already have a plate, the landlord has given you a CAD file, and somebody in the leadership meeting wants to know whether 78 people fit. That is not a ratio question. It is a question about module widths, aisle clearances and how many cabins the directors insist on. Two 4,000 sq ft floors with identical sq-ft-per-person figures can differ by twenty desks purely on column grid and core position.
| Aisle standard | Factor used | Clear width | When it is right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tight | 0.36 | 1.0 m primary, 0.9 m secondary | Young teams, low storage, no trolley traffic |
| Standard | 0.30 | 1.2 m primary, 1.0 m secondary | The safe default for most Indian fit-outs |
| Generous | 0.25 | 1.5 m primary, plus storage runs | Accessible routes, high footfall, client-facing floors |
Desk counts settle arguments that ratios cannot
Worked example: a 6,200 sq ft Andheri plate
A client took 6,200 sq ft of usable area in an Andheri East IT building and wanted 110 desks. Eight directors wanted cabins. The brief also called for four meeting rooms and a proper pantry.
- Cabins: 8 × 110 = 880 sq ft gone before anything else is drawn.
- Meeting rooms: 4 × 160 = 640 sq ft.
- Support at 16%: 992 sq ft.
- Net open area: 6,200 − 2,512 = 3,688 sq ft.
- At 1.2 m aisles: 3,688 × 0.30 = 1,106 sq ft of desk footprint. At 1400 mm benches that is 105 desks — five short.
- Dropping two cabins to shared offices released 220 sq ft, which at the same factor added six positions. The brief was met without touching the aisle standard.
Every cabin you sign off in the concept meeting costs eleven bench positions. Say that out loud before the drawing is issued, not after.
Greenbox commercial fit-out lead
Every constant above comes from Greenbox site records — measured drawings, signed BOQs and completion certificates from projects delivered between 2023 and 2026 — rounded to figures an estimator would actually use. We publish them so you can audit the arithmetic instead of trusting a black box. Treat the output as a planning figure: it is accurate enough to brief a landlord, a bank or a spouse, and not accurate enough to sign a contract against.
What this tool does not cover
- Fire and egress. Desk counts must be checked against travel distances to the nearest exit and against the local fire officer's occupancy view. Geometry that fits can still fail approval.
- Column grid and core position. A plate with columns at 6 m on an awkward offset can lose 4–7% of the theoretical count. A CAD test-fit is the only way to know.
- Floor loading and power. Dense benching concentrates small-power demand. Check the incoming load and the number of raw power points before you plan for more than 1.2 desks per existing circuit.
- Accessible routes. At least one 1.5 m route through the floor is expected on most corporate briefs; the tight factor does not provide it.
- Ceiling services. Sprinkler heads and VAV boxes are laid out for the previous tenant's plan. Re-spacing them is a cost, not a constraint, but it is a cost people forget.
- Cost is not modelled here at all — use the office interior cost calculator once the count is settled.
Commercial fit-outs delivered by Greenbox Design Studio.
Frequently asked questions
How many workstations fit in 1,000 sq ft?+
Roughly 16–20 desks if the 1,000 sq ft is pure open plan at 1400 mm benches, but only 11–13 once you deduct a realistic share of pantry, store and one meeting room. On a whole floor plate the honest planning figure is 55–65 sq ft per desk with everything counted.
What is the minimum space for one workstation in India?+
There is no single statutory figure for desks in an office; the practical floor is a 1200 × 600 mm worktop with a 0.9 m chair pull-back and a 1.0 m aisle behind it. Below that, chairs collide and the run becomes unusable during a fire drill.
How is this different from the office space per employee calculator?+
That tool works forward from headcount to the area you should lease. This one works backwards from an area you already have to the desks it will hold. Use the space calculator to shortlist buildings, and this one to test a specific plate.
Does the count include chairs pulled back?+
Yes, inside the aisle allowance. The module footprint is desk plus bench spine plus screen; the 0.9–1.0 m the chair needs is taken from the circulation share, which is why the aisle standard moves the answer so much.
Should I plan desks for today's headcount or three years out?+
Plan the power, data and HVAC capacity for three years, and install desks for today plus about 10%. Adding benches into an already-serviced floor is a weekend's work; adding circuits and ducting is not.