Buying guide

Clearances, desking systems, power, acoustics and the order to buy things in.

Furnishing one desk is shopping. Furnishing a floor is a project. The difference is that on a project the expensive mistakes happen before anything is ordered.

This is the sequence we would follow.

Get the floor plan, or draw one. Mark the fixed things: columns, radiators, risers, the door swing, where the power and data actually come out of the floor or wall.

Then work in the space furniture needs around it, which is the part people forget:

A layout that works on paper at 1000mm clearances and fails in the room is almost always a circulation problem, not a furniture problem.

Not the same number. Decide early:

• how many people are in on the busiest day, not on the payroll
• whether anyone hot-desks, and at what ratio
• how many meeting seats you need, and how often the big room is genuinely full
• whether you need quiet space for calls, which almost everyone underestimates

A floor with enough desks and nowhere to take a call is a floor people avoid.

Desking comes in a few families and they do not mix well visually:

• Panel end desks are the traditional choice. Solid, quiet, and the panel hides cabling.
• Cantilever leg desks are lighter to look at and easier to reconfigure.
• Bench desking puts several people on a shared frame. Cheapest per user, tidiest cable route, best for dense open plan.
• Sit-stand, individually or back-to-back. Most expensive per user, and the one staff notice.

Pick the family first, then the finish. Trying to match a new cantilever range to an existing panel end range across a room rarely looks deliberate.

The commonest fit-out regret is furniture that arrived before anyone decided where the power was going. Sort out, on the plan:

• floor boxes or wall sockets, and whether the desk positions line up with them
• in-desk power modules, which are far cheaper specified at order than retrofitted
• cable trays and spines under every desk run
• one route per run rather than one route per desk

Open plan without acoustic treatment is the reason people wear headphones all day. It is cheap to fix at fit-out and awkward afterwards.

• Desktop screens between facing desks cut direct sound and give people a sense of edge
• Floor-standing screens divide zones without building walls
• Acoustic wall tiles, ceiling baffles and hanging rafts absorb the reflections that make a hard-surfaced room exhausting
• Booths and pods give you call space without a construction project

A room with hard floors, glass and plasterboard needs more absorption than you think.

Most offices buy too many pedestals and not enough shared storage. A modern floor usually wants:

• a small mobile pedestal per desk, or a personal locker if people hot-desk
• shared steel storage or cupboards at the end of each run
• one tall unit for the things nobody will admit to owning

1. Desks and storage, because they set the layout and have the longest lead times
2. Seating, which can follow and is easiest to sample first
3. Screens and acoustics, once the desks are positioned
4. Soft seating and breakout, last, when you know what space is left

Made-to-order items, which includes most acoustic products, special colourways and design soft seating, run to 15 to 20 working days. Put those in first even though they arrive last.

Installation pricing assumes reasonable access. The things that turn a smooth day into a charged return visit are:

• a goods lift that turns out to be out of service
• no parking, or a loading bay booked by someone else
• other trades still working in the room, which we cannot install around for safety reasons
• a floor level that was not mentioned

Tell us the awkward bits in advance. Nobody minds a difficult site. Everybody minds a surprise.

Something will be missing. Order five per cent more of the small consumable items, keep one spare chair, and do not book the office move for the day after the last delivery is due.

Send us a floor plan and a rough headcount, and we will come back with a layout, a product list and a delivery sequence. There is no charge for that and it is much easier than untangling it later.

Call 0208 103 4875 or email info@officefurniturestoreuk.co.uk. No charge, and no obligation to buy anything.