What Size Office Space Do You Need?

How many square feet per employee?

Determining necessary office space has shifted. Per-employee benchmarks are declining, accelerating since 2020 as return-to-office policies change density requirements.

Leasing involves distinguishing rentable from usable square feet. Landlord test-fits help evaluate space for your needs, including phone booths, Zoom rooms, team areas, pantries, or informal seating.

Historically, New York offices allocated 250–300 usable square feet per person to accommodate perimeter private offices, secretarial bays, file storage, and large workstations.

Three key changes reduced the needed footprint: digitizing paper eliminated physical storage; workstations shrank from 8'x8' to 6'x6'; and open layouts replaced enclosed offices. Consequently, standard space per person dropped to 150–250 rentable square feet (150 or less for open plans).

Why the number stopped being about headcount

The assumption behind every per-employee figure was that everyone on the payroll came in every day, so headcount and seat count were the same. That assumption is gone, and it did not come back.

Attendance shifted from 5 days a week to 3–4, peaking midweek. For example, a 200-person company might have 140 employees in on Wednesday but only 60 on Friday. Sizing for low-attendance days leaves midweek peak days with insufficient desks, while sizing for peak days leaves excess space on lighter days.

So the planning question changed from how many people do we employ to how many people are here on a normal busy day, and what do they need when they are here. Teams that come in specifically to be together need proportionally more meeting and collaboration space and fewer assigned desks — which is why many tenants have cut total square footage while the space per attending person went up, not down.

Rentable versus usable square feet

Space planners measure usable square feet, while leases use rentable square feet, which includes shared areas like lobbies and mechanical rooms. The difference is the loss factor. In Manhattan, loss factors average 27% for full floors and 37% for partial, multi-tenant floors. Efficiency and floor plate type also impact total space utilization.

New York also measures differently from most of the country. REBNY’s recommended method of measurement is not BOMA’s, and the same physical floor can be marketed at materially different rentable numbers depending on which standard produced the figure.

The practical consequence: a plan at 150 usable square feet per person can appear on a lease as 200 or more rentable square feet per person, and two buildings quoting the same rent per rentable foot can deliver noticeably different amounts of usable floor. Compare on usable, or at least insist on knowing the loss factor before you compare anything.

Denser is not always cheaper

You need to focus on yield: how many offices, cubicles, Zoom rooms, breakout rooms and phone booths the floor delivers.

Building codes determine a floor's occupant load, and regulate exits, stairs, and plumbing fixtures. Plans exceeding designed capacity will be rejected by the building department. Older Class B or C buildings face the greatest challenges, as lower original density limits HVAC, electrical, and bathroom capacity. Upgrading older spaces to modern tech density often requires tenant-funded capital improvements like supplemental cooling, electrical upgrades, or added fixtures.

Dense plans also cost more to build per square foot. More people per floor means more workstations, more power and data drops, more meeting rooms to absorb the noise the open plan creates, and better air handling. The fit-out can undo a cheaper rent on a denser plan, so the comparison that matters is the total cost of occupying the space over the term, not the rent per foot.

How to size your next lease

A workable sequence, in the order the answers actually arrive:

1. Count attendance, not headcount. Use badge or booking data for a normal busy day — usually midweek — rather than the payroll.
2. Decide the sharing ratio deliberately. Assigned seats for everyone is one answer; some number of seats per attending person is another. It is a policy decision, and it drives the square footage more than any other input.
3. Size the shared space separately. Meeting rooms, phone rooms, pantries, and collaboration areas don't scale with desks, and under-building them is the most common complaint in hybrid offices.
4. Convert to rentable before you compare buildings. Apply each building’s actual loss factor; do not assume they match.
5. Test the plan against the building. Confirm the occupant load, the cooling capacity, and the fixture counts support your density before you are deep into a negotiation.
6. Add room to move. Expansion rights, contraction rights, or a sublease provision are cheaper to negotiate at signing than to solve in year three.

The size you need depends on the efficiency of the floor plate, whether you need a full or partial floor, and the yield of offices and workstations. Start with attendance, plan for usable square feet, sign for rentable square feet, and confirm the building can deliver the yield you need.