How much should office furniture cost?

If you’re bootstrapping, you should keep the costs to furnish an office as close to $0 as possible while you get the business off the ground. Once the business starts growing and you move from the seed stage to early stage, and especially growth stage, there’s the tendency to progressively improve the office in an effort to look more credible for recruiting, but especially for egos.

Here are ballpark costs to outfit a startup with mid-to-high-end furnishings:

• Open workspace with “L” shaped desk, cabinet, and electrical – $1,500/person (nice cubicles are $3,500/person)
• Herman Miller Aeron chair – $600/person
• MacBook Air/Pro – $1,500/person
• 25″ monitor – $350/person
• Wired ethernet port – $100/person
• Desk accessories like keyboard, mouse, etc – $150/person

So, for $4,200 per person you’ll have a great, professional environment. Add another five grand for things like a nice coffee maker (a must!), switches, routers, access points, foos ball, ping pong, and more (not counting build-out of the office, conference room furniture, etc). The final ingredient is blazing fast Internet ($2,000/month) and you’ll have a sweet set up.

What else? What other costs are necessary to furnish a nice startup office?

P.S. We’re hiring and have the environment outlined above (apply online).

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Related

Hello! Thanks for your question about office furniture spending in the U.S. The most useful sources I found to answer your question are

Allsteel's cost estimation tool

and a

furniture pricing matrix

. The short version is that spending on office furniture in the U.S. averages about $105.65 per employee and millenials and their preferences are driving the office furniture market. While we were unable to find data broken down by gender and industry, there was information on what different age groups spend on furniture and their shares in the market. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.

MARKET SIZE

Over the last four years, the U.S. office furniture market

increased

from $13.79 billion in 2013 to an estimated $16 billion in 2016. The U.S. Census Bureau reported a total of just over

6.7 million existing businesses

in the U.S. in 2013. By dividing the 2013 office furniture spend by the number of businesses in the U.S., I was able to estimate that each business spends an average of about $2,058 on office furniture. This does, however, include businesses that consist of only one person or a very small number of employees.

According to the

Bureau of Laber Statistics

, there are a total of 151,436 full- and part-time workers in the United States. When I divided the estimated $16 million market size for 2016 by that number, I arrived at an average $105.65 spent on office furniture per employee. This estimate likely seems low because many workers do not use office furniture (such as those who work outdoors, wait tables, or are self-employed).

ESTIMATED FURNITURE COSTS

Fortunately, I found a few better ways to estimate furniture costs. Office furniture supplier Allsteel includes a

handy estimation tool

on their website that allows companies to estimate the cost per square foot of furnishing offices based on square feet available, total number of employees, and types of desks, offices, and common spaces.

Another breakdown

estimates cost by office size and quality of furniture; for example, high-level furniture in a 10,000 square foot space might be expected to cost about $9.75 per square foot, but furnishing the same space with used furniture would cost approximately $3.25 per square foot.

I also found a blog post that offers

general estimates

for mid-to-high end office furniture at about $4,200 per employee plus about $7,000 for internet, extras, common spaces, and infrastructure as well as a

detailed breakdown of estimated costs

in the San Francisco area by square foot, office type, and type of furniture. These range from $12 to $30 per square foot, $1,500-$3,000 for an administrative workstation, and $1,000 to over $4,000 for a conference table, to name a few.

Overall, average spend varies widely by type of furniture, area costs, number of employees, and the companies used. Unfortunately, despite searching corporate and industry reports, government data, and trusted media sites we were unable to find breakdowns of furniture purchased by gender or company size, but with the data given it should be relatively simple to estimate the cost of office furniture for a specific business and/or office location.

MILLENIALS AND FURNITURE

Millenials represented 37% of the

general furniture market

in 2014, a dramatic increase from 14% in 2012, and their spending on furniture doubled during that time. While baby boomers still dominate the market, millenials and Gen X'ers are continuing to increase their share, so forward-thinking designs should try to incorporate their preferences, which include eco-friendly products and multifunctional items that represent their dynamic lifestyles.

Though these statistics encompass the furniture industry at large, it stands to reason that similar trends are at play in the office furniture market as well.

OFFICE FURNITURE TRENDS

The types of furniture that businesses purchase have changed greatly with the explosion of the internet. Modern offices tend to focus on environmentally friendly design and think outside the box - literally - by eschewing traditional cubicles in favor of furniture that encourages movement, flexibility, and collaboration. Thanks to cloud-based data storage, the spaces

once used for filing cabinets

can now become communal areas, group workspaces, or more comfortable, open seating for employees. Google, for example, features

a large round couch

in its London headquarters. Because technology allows employees to work anywhere, office furniture can be adapted to fit workers' needs and reflect a company's personality and values.

Communal work stations reduce the need for individual desks, but even those are undergoing a transformation. Standing desks, treadmill desks, and wireless desks are becoming popular

according to Inc. Magazine

, and

Forbes suggests

that standing desks are a strong example of ways that office design is becoming both more aesthetically attractive and ergonomic.

CONCLUSION

To wrap it up, spending largely depends on location, type of furniture, and number of employees, but anywhere from $10-30 per square foot seems to be the norm. For a more specific estimate based on the client's company, the Allsteel tool should provide a reasonable average to use as a starting point.

Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!