What size boardroom table? Matching the room to the number of seats

The meeting room is one of the hardest-worked rooms in an office, and also the one where the table is most often bought wrong. Some are so large that chairs hit the wall and can barely be pulled out; others so small that every meeting ends with extra chairs dragged in and people squeezed round a corner. This article works through it in order — from the number of people, to the length of table, to the size of room you need — so that meetings start professionally instead of with five minutes of rearranging.

The calculation: how much table length per seat

The international rule of thumb is 60–75 centimetres of width per seat, enough for elbows, papers and a laptop without anyone crowding their neighbour. Applied to standard table sizes, that gives you the following.

• 2.4 metre table — 6 to 8 seats, suiting a team meeting room of around 15 square metres
• 3.0 metre table — 8 to 10 seats, right for the main meeting room of a mid-sized company
• 3.6 metre table — 10 to 12 seats, for a boardroom or executive meeting room

The 120 centimetre rule you must not forget

Table length is only half the equation. The other half is the distance from the edge of the table to the wall, which should be at least 120 centimetres so chairs can be pushed back and someone can walk behind a seated colleague. Where there is a cabinet or a presentation screen on one side, make it 150. The quick check: take the length and width of the table and add 2.4 metres to each. If that comes to more than the room you actually have, drop the table down one size.

Shape and services, planned together

The rectangle is the most popular shape and the most efficient use of the floor, and it makes the seating order clear — which suits any meeting with a chair. For workshop-style sessions, joined cluster desks may serve better because they break into smaller groups. What should be planned at the same time as the table is the position of the power outlets and the screen connection, which want to be as close to the table as possible so no cable crosses a walkway; and the lighting above, which should be even along the whole length rather than pooling in spots that leave faces alternately lit and shadowed.

The tabletop has to look as good in year five

A boardroom table meets coffee cups, laptops dragged across it, and cleaning several times a day, so the material matters as much as the size. A good melamine top resists water and the scratches of daily use. WORKSTATION boardroom tables are made from E0-grade low-formaldehyde board, safe for the people using the room, certified to ISO 9001:2015, ANSI, BIFMA and SGS, and carry a structural warranty of up to five years depending on the model — so the room still looks the part years from now.

Stuck on the size? Send us the dimensions of your meeting room and our team will do the calculation and the layout free of charge, with a quote — at /quote or on 095-424-4166.