Open Plan or Private Offices: Choosing an Office Layout

Arguments about open offices tend to focus on productivity and collaboration, and studies can be found to support nearly any position. We will not quote any here, because your own answer depends on your people. A law firm with confidential calls, a sales team on the phone all day and a design studio that shares large work surfaces will reach three different results.

A better first step is to list what happens in the space and how often. Who needs privacy for confidential conversations? Who is on calls most of the day, and who rarely is? How many people are in on a typical day, and on the busiest one? Does your team bring clients in? Answering these questions turns an argument about style into a list of rooms and seats that can be priced. Our guide to test fits and space programming covers how to turn that list into a plan.

We will not give costs per square foot, since they vary by city, building and scope, and any figure would be out of date quickly. What can be said is where the costs come from.

• Private offices add framing, drywall, doors, hardware, glass if you use it, and more ceiling, lighting, sprinkler and electrical work to serve each enclosed room.
• Open areas have fewer walls, but they shift spending elsewhere. Workstations, power and data delivered to the middle of the floor, acoustic treatment and enough phone rooms can all be significant.
• Exposed ceilings can look like a saving, but acoustic and mechanical work may offset it. Ask your contractor to price the actual design and not a general assumption.
• Furniture needs its own budget line. An open plan makes furniture a larger part of the total, and many landlord allowances do not cover it unless negotiated.

Ask your contractor to price the same floor both ways. A real comparison on your layout tells you more than any rule of thumb about which is cheaper.

Layout affects how many rentable square feet you need, which then multiplies through rent, operating expenses and allowance for the whole term. If a large share of the floor is enclosed offices, circulation and wall thickness take up usable area, so each person generally takes up more space. A more open layout can seat the same headcount on less area, as long as you add enough meeting and quiet rooms to make it work.

Do not compare layouts on seat count alone. A plan with many seats and too few rooms pushes conversations into corners and hallways, and then you may lease more space later to fix it. Compare on total cost of the term for the mix of seats and rooms you would actually use.

The floor plate also matters. Where private offices line the windows, daylight may stop at the office doors, so open-plan teams in the center get less of it. Deep floors, column spacing and window lines can favor one layout over another. That is one reason to test-fit before you narrow your list to one building.

Walls change how a floor performs. Enclosed rooms may need separate HVAC zones and thermostats to stay comfortable, and rooms that fill up with people may need more air than the base system provides. Dense open areas raise similar questions about outside air and cooling capacity. If you plan either, ask the building engineer about capacity before relying on it, and ask your lawyer to check how after-hours HVAC is charged.

Your architect should also confirm exit routes, occupant load, restroom capacity and accessibility for each option. Higher density can trigger questions the base building did not anticipate. Federal rules generally treat remodeling as an alteration that must be accessible to the maximum extent feasible where the ADA's public accommodation rules apply (28 CFR 36.402), and the landlord and tenant may allocate that responsibility by lease (28 CFR 36.201). Ask your attorney and architect how those rules apply to your office.

The layout you build today will outlast any given team structure. Three lease clauses decide how expensive a later change will be.

• Alterations. If you may want to reconfigure later, negotiate a right to make non-structural changes under a stated cost threshold without landlord consent, by giving notice. Movable partitions and modular furniture are easier to change than drywall.
• Restoration. Internal stairs, unusual glass walls, raised floors and heavy equipment are the items landlords most often want removed at the end of a term. Ask at plan approval what must come out. Ordinary offices are less likely to draw a demand, but only your lease wording can confirm it.
• Allowance. Check that the allowance can cover what your plan actually requires. Generous offices use up construction dollars, and open plans shift them to furniture and cabling, which may be excluded unless you negotiate otherwise.

If the space was already built out, the existing walls change the math. Reusing a floor of private offices may be cheaper than clearing it for an open plan, even if open plan would have cost less on an empty floor.

• ✓Which roles truly need a door, for confidentiality or concentration, and which simply expect one?
• ✓How many people are on calls at once on a busy day, and how many phone rooms does that require?
• ✓How does attendance vary across the week, and are assigned seats still needed?
• ✓Where will client meetings happen, and can visitors get there without crossing the work area?
• ✓What will be stored, and does any of it need a locked room?
• ✓Who is expected to join in the next few years, and does the plan hold up if the team grows or shrinks?
• ✓What would it cost to convert the plan later, and does the lease let us do it?
• ✓Have we priced at least two layouts on the same floor and included furniture, cabling and technology?

Most tenants arrive at a mix: open or lightly divided areas for people who work together, enclosed rooms for people who need privacy, and enough small rooms for everyone else. TAG helps tenants test that mix across buildings. We bring the test fits and the lease economics together, so a layout decision is made with the rent, allowance and restoration consequences in view.