Office fit-out advice typically assumes that the audience has a large, full floor to work with. If you have an office that’s 600 or 800 sq ft, typically an office with a small team or a serviced office or a unit in a business park, that advice doesn’t help you. You don’t have the space for a breakout zone, a quiet room, or a bank of hot desks. You have to decide what the space is for.
For the most part, those choices are bypassed in small offices. Most small offices choose to be a combination of three things, and three things at once, and, in the end, none of those things well.
Think about how your team actually uses the space.
An office under 1,000 sq ft focuses on one clear function. If your team is mostly desk-based and comes into the office daily, an open office plan with storage and desks would serve your team better than zoning. If you disperse your team throughout the office for desk-based work on a few days a week, you would benefit from a flexible office plan with an upgraded meeting space and a designated quiet space for phone calls.
Make that decision first, then the layout and the budget will follow.
Storage – assumes all the space in an office
In small offices, storage is what makes the space functional or chaotic half a year in. Wall-mounted shelving is better than freestanding shelving because it makes the office feel more spacious and allows to keep the office floor clear. Pedestals for the space under the desk should be a fit-out budget priority. They keep the office clear of visual clutter from personal items.
If there is a storage room or comms cupboard, use them from the start. It will become a room full of stuff that nobody knows where to put, unless you designate its purpose.
Lighting – the most neglected office fit-out budget item
Office lighting design is usually the last thing to be considered, and the cheapest item on the budget. In small offices, the cheapest lighting is a mistake because the wrong lighting design can put people off working in the office. Small offices with the wrong lighting design feel like a waiting room.
Layered, good lighting does not have to be expensive, especially in a small office. For general ambience, a 4,000K LED panel are good enough to work under. Warm LED panels with poor colour temperature do not make great task lighting. Prioritize natural lighting. Choose the windows with the best light.
Small office sound issues
The biggest problem when fitting out small offices is sound, and most people don’t even consider it. Bare floors and walls paired with glass offices tend to bounce sound, where even a single phone call by an employee of a 4-10 person team is heard by the whole team.
This can be solved by adding desk partitions, acoustic panels to the ceiling, and floor tiles that are carpet vs vinyl. These things can be relatively inexpensive. If your team makes a lot of phone calls, consider a glass meeting room that is a phone booth or an acoustic partition to help with sound absorption vs. a glass meeting room that tends to amplify the sound.
What to really invest in
For the square footage that you have, feature walls, pod chairs, and game tables are unnecessary. Go for the essentials first, and everything else can be considered later. There are a lot of good spaces under 1,000 sq ft, and they have been designed for their specific purpose. Don’t try to replicate the design of a larger office, but smaller.