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Planning an office fit-out in Zürich comes down to five things, in this order: how your team really works, how much space each activity needs, how light and sound behave in that space, a layout that respects traffic routes, and a budget that counts the cost of a poor fit as well as the price per square metre. Get those right and the furniture becomes the easy, enjoyable part. Get them wrong and no designer chair will rescue the day.
This guide walks you through the process the way we would with a client on Bahnhofstrasse or in Zürich West: practical, honest, and anchored in Swiss guidance from SECO, EKAS and Suva.
Upscale Interiors
Plan a More Thoughtful Zürich Office
Upscale Interiors designs tailored commercial spaces, with services including space planning, material selection, furniture sourcing and project management.
TL;DR
- Start with how people work (focus, calls, collaboration, visitors), not with a floor plan or a furniture catalogue.
- Swiss guidance expects daylight and a view outside at workstations, and plenty of light on the task. Plan desks around windows first.
- Noise is the number one complaint in larger offices. Budget for acoustic panels, partitions and retreat spaces from day one.
- Keep desks away from corridors behind the chair, and leave free movement space around every workstation.
- Count the hidden costs of a cramped layout (absences, lost concentration), not only the rent per square metre.
Start with how your team works, not with the floor plan
Every good office concept begins with a simple, slightly uncomfortable question: what do people actually do all day? Not what the organisation chart says, but what happens between 9 and 5.
Spend a week noting how long people spend on focused solo work, on video calls, in quick huddles, in planned meetings and with clients. A law firm near Paradeplatz will show a very different pattern from a software team in Zürich West. Once you have that picture, you can sort the activities into zones:
- Focus zones for deep work, ideally quiet and with good daylight.
- Collaboration zones for workshops and project work, where noise is acceptable.
- Communication zones such as phone booths and small call rooms.
- Reception and client areas, where your brand makes its first impression.
- Support areas: printing, storage, kitchen, coffee point.
This activity list is your design brief. It also settles the big question of fixed desks versus shared ones. The Canton of Zürich's own office standard for cantonal premises allows everything from fixed workstations in cells to activity-based concepts, and uses a factor of 0.8 in the activity-based case to relate headcount to workstations. Your own ratio should come from your attendance data, not from a rule of thumb.
A quick reality check: if people are in the office three days out of five on average, you will still have peak days when almost everyone is in. Plan for the peak, then add flexibility for the rest.
How much space does each workstation need?
Floor area is where budgets are won or lost, so it pays to be precise. As a commonly used rule of thumb in Switzerland, a single screen workstation needs around 6 m², and around 8 to 10 m² once you add local storage next to the desk. On top of the furniture, each person needs a clear zone of about 1.5 m² to move in. Treat these as planning minimums and check them against the current text of the Swiss labour law ordinances and with your building owner or architect before you sign off a layout.
A worked example makes this tangible. Say you are planning for 20 people with a mix of fixed and shared desks:
That is roughly 190 m² before circulation and technical rooms. These room sizes are our own planning assumptions, not official figures, so treat the table as a template to adapt. The point is the method: add up the activities, then test the total against the premises you are considering. It is far cheaper to discover that a floor is too small on paper than after the lease is signed.
Light: plan the desks around the windows
Light is the most underestimated part of an office concept. EKAS, the Swiss federal coordination commission for occupational safety, makes it clear that light influences activity levels, physiology and well-being, and that workstations should, as a rule, be set up in rooms with natural light and a view outside. Where that is not possible, compensation such as breaks in daylight areas or job rotation is expected.
In practice that means:
- Put permanent desks near windows and use the dark centre of the floor for meeting rooms, storage and print areas.
- Do not rely on ceiling lights alone. The SECO guidance on Article 15 of Ordinance 3 to the Labour Act discusses light intensity at the eye of at least 600 lux for physiological reasons, so ask your lighting planner what values they design for.
- Avoid glare. A screen directly in front of a window, or directly beneath a bright source, tires the eyes. Turn the screen at a right angle to the window and use indirect light.
- Think twice about tall storage. Replacing sitting desks with sit-stand models without rethinking shelves and partitions can end up blocking the very daylight you were protecting.
If you are also weighing the lighting design of a private residence in the same project, our notes on bespoke lighting for homes in Geneva show how much documentation good lighting needs, and the same discipline applies to offices.
Acoustics: the problem that grows with every extra desk
The Swiss office study SBiB found that symptoms are linked to work organisation and environmental factors, and that satisfaction with equipment and ambient conditions, noise and lighting above all, falls as the number of people in a room rises. SECO's brochure on open-plan offices makes the same trade-off: flexibility is a real advantage, but it comes with a higher risk of health complaints that you have to design against.
The fix is not one magic product. It is a package:
- Absorb: ceiling baffles, wall panels, rugs and acoustic upholstery to shorten reverberation.
- Screen: partitions between desk groups, and high-backed seating in lounge areas.
- Separate: dedicated retreat spaces and phone booths, so calls do not happen at the desks.
- Agree: a simple noise etiquette, because behaviour matters as much as materials.
Soft furnishings do real work here. Heavy drapery, for example, can take the edge off a glass-heavy room, and acoustic curtains are worth considering where you cannot fit panels. For a Zürich-specific deep dive, our guide to office acoustics in Zürich covers materials and layouts in more detail.
Layout: where people sit matters more than what they sit on
The most overlooked layout issue is also the simplest: traffic routes. Someone with a corridor directly behind their chair is subconsciously disturbed by every passing colleague, and it is a major source of dissatisfaction in offices that otherwise look perfect on the plan.
A few rules we apply on almost every project:
- Place desks side-on to circulation, or put a low cabinet or planter between the chair and the walkway.
- Keep loud functions together (kitchen, printing, meeting rooms) and away from focus zones.
- Give teams that talk a lot a shared neighbourhood, and place the quietest roles furthest from it.
- Plan the route a visitor takes from the lift to the meeting room, so they never walk through the working floor.
- Design for change. Furniture on castors, modular storage and flexible power supply let you reconfigure without calling a contractor.
The benefits of getting this stage right with professional help are laid out well in our article on the benefits of professional space planning.
Ergonomics: a legal duty as well as a comfort
Ergonomics is not a luxury add-on. Swiss guidance from Suva on sitting and standing workstations explains how to set up desks and chairs so employees stay healthy, and Suva's wider page on physical strain at work notes that poor posture at the screen leads to absences that are costly for companies.
What to specify, in plain terms:
- Height-adjustable desks, so the work surface can match elbow height and the forearms are supported.
- Chairs that support the whole back, with feet flat on the floor or on a footrest.
- Monitors at a comfortable reading distance, set up at a right angle to windows.
- A mix of sitting and standing, with enough space beside the desk to actually change position.
The same logic applies to people who work from home part of the week. SECO's home office brochure describes the health risks of a badly set up screen workstation at home. If you are fitting out a study for yourself or for senior staff, well-planned home office built-ins can deliver the right desk depth and storage in one stroke.
The budget: look beyond the price per square metre
It is tempting to judge an office by what it costs per square metre and to squeeze in as many desks as the floor allows. The SBiB researchers' warning, as we read it, is that this is a trap: the cost of lost concentration and health-related absences from poor acoustics, glare and cramped layouts tends to outweigh what high density saves.
A sensible Zürich budget therefore has these lines:
- Concept and planning: the brief, zoning, layout options and technical drawings.
- Construction and technical work: walls, ceilings, electrics, lighting, ventilation.
- Acoustic measures: often forgotten at first, expensive to add later.
- Furniture and fittings: desks, chairs, storage, lounge and meeting furniture.
- Delivery, assembly and project management: the quiet line item that protects your move-in date.
- A contingency: we would keep a reserve for the surprises every refurbishment produces.
Ask for each line separately in every quote, so you can compare like with like.
Our perspective: an office is a brand you can walk through
At Upscale Interiors we combine interior architecture and interior design, and that matters in offices more than anywhere. A fit-out is a technical problem (light, sound, circulation, building services) and a human one (how it feels to arrive on a Monday morning) at the same time. Treating them separately is how you end up with a beautiful reception and a noisy, dim working floor.
What we see again and again is that clients arrive with a furniture wish list and leave with something better: a brief. Once the activities are mapped and the zones drawn, choices about materials, colours and furniture brands get easier and more confident. We see the same on the residential side, where a clear concept saves far more than it costs.
Our advice is simple. Spend the time at the start, test the layout with real people, and keep a little flexibility in the plan for the team you will have in three years, not just the team you have today.
— Giorgia D'Amico
Working with a designer on your Zürich office
If you would rather not carry this alone, we can help from the first sketch to the final delivery. Our office design service covers space planning, material selection, furniture sourcing, 3D visualisations and full project management, for companies in Zürich and elsewhere in Switzerland. Pricing for office projects is individual, so the first step is a conversation about your space and your team. You can also see how we work locally on our Zürich interior design page.
A simple step-by-step plan
- Observe how your team works for a week and note peak attendance.
- Define zones and the number of workstations, meeting rooms and retreat spaces.
- Check the numbers: area per workstation, free movement space, daylight access.
- Draft two layouts and walk through each as an employee and as a visitor.
- Plan light and acoustics together with the layout, not after it.
- Select furniture and materials, with ergonomics as a hard requirement.
- Visualise in 3D so the team can react before anything is built.
- Schedule the move with delivery and assembly coordinated by one person.
FAQ
How much space do I need per employee?
As a planning rule of thumb in Switzerland, a screen workstation needs about 6 m², or 8 to 10 m² with local storage, plus roughly 1.5 m² of free movement space. Meeting rooms, kitchen and circulation come on top. Confirm the final figures with your architect against the current labour law guidance.
Should I choose an open-plan office?
Open plan works if you also provide retreat spaces, phone booths and real acoustic treatment. Without those, satisfaction with noise and lighting tends to fall as rooms get larger, according to the SBiB study. Smaller team neighbourhoods are often a better compromise than one large hall.
How much natural light must workstations have?
EKAS guidance says workstations should, as a rule, be in rooms with natural light and an outside view. If that is not possible, compensating measures such as breaks in daylight areas or job rotation are expected. Place permanent desks by the windows and put support functions in the darker core.
When should I involve a designer?
Before you sign the lease, if you can. A designer can test whether a floor plate fits your activities, which avoids costly surprises later. At the latest, bring one in before you order furniture.
Sources
- Kanton Zürich: Standard Büro
- EKAS: Arbeitssicherheit und Gesundheitsschutz in Bürobetrieben
- SECO: Wegleitung zu Artikel 15 ArGV 3, Beleuchtung
- SECO: SBiB-Studie
- SECO: Grossraumbüros
- Suva: Sitzen oder stehen?
- Suva: Ergonomie, körperliche Belastung
- SECO: Homeoffice Gesundheitsschutz
Recommended
- Office Acoustics in Zürich
- Benefits of Professional Space Planning for Business Leaders
- Interior Design Zurich
