New Office Setup: What to Buy, and in What Order
The sequence that prevents rework, the four measurements every quantity comes from, per-person reference figures and the seven items almost every fit-out forgets.
What do you need when setting up a new office?
Two things decide almost everything else: the order you buy in, and four measurements. Infrastructure — power, lighting, network cabling — has to be finished before furniture arrives, and furniture has to be in place before technology is installed. Buying in the wrong order is the most expensive mistake in an office fit-out, because the items are cheap and the rework is not.
The four numbers are floor area, wall and ceiling area, headcount and escape-route length. Every quantity on the list derives from one of them: flooring and cleaning consumables from floor area, paint and acoustic panels from wall area, furniture and hygiene consumables from headcount, emergency signage and lighting from escape-route length. Without those four figures no quotation you receive is comparable to any other.
Order of work, and what blocks what
Lead times overlap, so the sequence is not about speed — it is about dependency. Each row below cannot start until the row above it is done.
| Order | Stage | Must be finished first | Typical lead time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Power, lighting and network infrastructure | Approved floor plan | 1–2 weeks |
| 2 | Furniture delivery and assembly | Infrastructure complete | 2–4 weeks if anything is made to order |
| 3 | Technology installation | Furniture in place | 3–5 days |
| 4 | Stationery, kitchen and cleaning first fill | Storage space ready | 1 week |
| 5 | Safety equipment, emergency kit and signage | Layout finalised | 1 week |
Made-to-order furniture is the usual critical path. If the fit-out has a fixed opening date, that is the row to order against first even though it sits second in the sequence.
The four numbers every quantity comes from
Ask for these before asking for a single price. A supplier who quotes without them is guessing, and two such quotes cannot be compared.
| Number | What it determines | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Floor area (m²) | Flooring quantity, number of fire extinguishers, cleaning consumables | Scaled floor plan |
| Wall and ceiling area (m²) | Litres of paint, acoustic panel area, partition materials | Floor plan plus ceiling height |
| Headcount | Furniture, IT hardware, hygiene and refreshment consumables, rest-area obligations | HR plan and shift pattern |
| Escape-route length (m) | Emergency sign size, number of emergency light fittings | Fire plan |
Escape-route length is the one most often missing. Sign size is not a matter of taste: legibility distance scales with the height of the pictogram, so the corridor length sets the sign you must buy.
Per-person reference quantities
Planning figures for a first fill, not a rule. They are useful for turning a headcount into an order in a single pass, then adjusting.
| Item | Per person | For a 20-person office |
|---|---|---|
| Desk and chair | 1 set | 20 sets |
| Monitor | 1–2 | 20–40 |
| Pedestal or personal locker | 1 | 20 |
| A4 paper, first fill | 1 ream (500 sheets) | 20 reams ≈ 4 boxes |
| Lever-arch files, first fill | 3 | 60 |
| Cups (water and hot drinks) | 3 | 60 |
| Waste bins | 1 per 4 people, plus shared areas | 5–8 |
| Meeting-room chairs | 0.4 | 8 |
Meeting chairs at 0.4 per person assumes one meeting room per twenty people. If the office is designed around hybrid working, that ratio rises and desk count falls.
Three budget lines, not one
Fit-out spend is usually booked as a single number and then misread for years afterwards. It behaves as three separate things:
| Type | Example | Budget behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| One-off setup | Furniture, technology, dispensers, signage, fire extinguishers | Non-recurring; part of it is a fixed asset and depreciates |
| First fill (consumables) | Paper, cleaning, stationery and refreshment opening stock | Non-recurring but expensed, not capitalised |
| Recurring consumables | Monthly paper, cleaning and refreshment usage | Monthly expense, planned from a per-person norm |
Mixing the first two with the third is what makes an office look far more expensive to run in year one than it actually is. Separate them at the order stage, not at year end.
The seven items people forget
These come up in almost every fit-out, always late and always at retail price:
| Item | Why it is forgotten | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Packaging and moving consumables | The move is treated as a service, not a materials line | Boxes, stretch film and tape bought at a supermarket on moving day |
| Dispenser–consumable compatibility | Paper towel and tissue ordered separately from the dispenser | Roll diameter does not fit; the first order goes back |
| Cable trunking and floor boxes | Socket count is planned, routing is not | Visible cable runs under every desk |
| Emergency sign size | “We’ll buy signs” — nobody calculates the size | Signs too small for the corridor; they fail inspection |
| Acoustics | Visual design finishes; echo is noticed after opening | Ceiling treatment reopened — the most expensive late fix |
| First-aid cabinet contents | The cabinet is bought, the contents are not | An empty box on the wall on day one |
| Keys, locks and access control spares | Assumed to come with the furniture and doors | No spare keys the first time someone loses one |
Every one of these is cheap if ordered with the main list and expensive if ordered alone — mostly because of minimum order quantities and separate delivery charges.
Where local regulation decides the quantity
Several quantities on a fit-out list are not a design choice at all: they are set by national fire and workplace regulation. Typically these include the number and size of fire extinguishers (usually per unit of floor area, varying by hazard class), emergency lighting duration, emergency sign dimensions (derived from viewing distance), and rest and eating facilities above a headcount threshold.
The thresholds differ by country, so this guide gives the mechanism rather than the numbers. For a fit-out in Türkiye the applicable thresholds are set out with their legal references in our Turkish guide; ask us and we will apply them to your floor plan.
How we handle a fit-out list
Send the floor plan and headcount and we return a line-by-line quotation across every category on the list — furniture, technology, electrical, flooring, stationery, cleaning, refreshments, safety and signage — on one document, one invoice and one account.
Where a quantity depends on one of the four numbers, we calculate it rather than asking you to. Where a quantity is set by regulation, we say which rule it comes from so it can be checked.
Frequently Asked Questions
In what order should an office fit-out be bought?
Infrastructure first — power, lighting and network cabling — then furniture, then technology, then consumables, then safety equipment and signage. The order matters because each stage physically blocks the next: technology cannot be installed before desks exist, and cabling cannot be run after the furniture is in place without taking it apart again.
What is the longest lead time in an office fit-out?
Usually furniture, especially anything made to order, at two to four weeks. Infrastructure runs one to two weeks and everything after it is a matter of days. If the opening date is fixed, furniture is what you order first even though it is second in the sequence.
How much stationery should we buy for a new office?
As a first fill, roughly one ream of A4 paper and three lever-arch files per person, then move to a per-person monthly norm once the office is running. The first fill and the recurring consumption are different budget lines and should be ordered — and booked — separately.
Why does the supplier need our floor plan?
Because most quantities derive from area rather than headcount. Flooring, paint, acoustic panels, fire extinguishers and emergency signage all come out of the plan; without it a supplier is guessing, and two guessed quotations cannot be compared line by line.
Should the moving materials be on the same order?
Yes, and they almost never are. Boxes, stretch film, tape and labels are a materials line, not part of the moving service. Ordered with the main list they are trivial; ordered on the day of the move they are bought at retail price in whatever quantity happens to be on the shelf.
Do we need to buy dispensers and refills together?
Together, or at least in that order. Paper towel and toilet tissue are sized to the dispenser, so ordering refills before the dispenser model is fixed is the most common cause of a returned first order.
Related guides
Office Supplies Budget per Employee
Once the office is running: how to build the recurring consumables budget.
Read moreSite Mobilisation Checklist
The same logic for a construction site rather than an office.
Read moreCorporate Purchasing Process
How a request becomes a quotation and an order.
Read moreRequest a Quote
Send the floor plan and headcount; get a line-by-line quotation.
Read moreSend your list — your quote is ready within 1 business day.
A list, a photo or an Excel file — whatever is easiest. On standard items most quotes go out the same business day. Custom production, imports or 50+ line lists can take longer; when they do, we tell you the timeline in writing on the day we receive the request.