Office fit-out costs in the UK

What does an office fit-out cost per square foot?

Cost guides published across the UK fit-out and commercial interiors sector converge on three broad bands for Category B work, quoted per square foot of net internal area and before VAT. A basic scheme runs from about £45 to £60. A mid-specification scheme sits between £60 and £90. A high-specification scheme starts around £90 and has no meaningful ceiling; £200 per square foot and above is normal for headquarters projects with bespoke joinery and heavy audio-visual provision.

Treat these as the shape of the market, not a quotation. They are ranges compiled from third-party industry cost guidance, not figures derived from the 3,269 company records held on this register. A real price comes from a real contractor pricing a real drawing set on a real building.

What the rate actually covers

A per-square-foot rate for an office fit-out almost always means Category B work: the occupier's fit-out of a space the landlord has already delivered to Category A standard. Confusing the two is the single most common reason a budget turns out to be wrong by a third.

Shell and core is the building handed over with structure, core, lifts and facade complete but the floorplates bare. Category A takes it to a lettable state: raised access floor, suspended ceiling, basic lighting, and heating, cooling and ventilation distributed but capped off. Category B is everything that makes it yours. Our Cat A vs Cat B explainer sets out where each handover sits and who pays for what.

Within a Cat B budget, the largest packages are usually:

• Partitioning and glazing — meeting rooms, offices, acoustic performance.
• Mechanical and electrical alterations — reworking the Cat A services to suit the new layout, plus small power and data.
• Joinery — reception desk, tea points, storage walls, benching and any bespoke feature.
• Finishes — floor coverings, ceilings, decoration and feature wall treatments.
• Preliminaries — site management, access, welfare, waste and out-of-hours working.

What moves the number

Five variables account for most of the spread between £45 and £200 per square foot. Understanding which apply to your building tells you which end of a published range to plan against before a contractor has priced anything.

Size and shape of the floorplate

Rate per square foot falls as area rises, because preliminaries, welfare and management are spread further. A 2,000 sq ft suite carries the same site setup as a 20,000 sq ft floor. Awkward geometry works the other way: columns, level changes and narrow cores drive partition runs and cutting waste up.

Specification and density

Cellular offices cost more than open plan, and glazed partitions cost more than plasterboard. Every additional meeting room brings partitions, a door, acoustic detailing, a lighting circuit, a ventilation branch and usually a screen. Density is the quiet multiplier that turns a mid-specification brief into a high-specification bill.

Condition of the building

A newly completed Cat A floor is the cheap starting point. A tired second-hand office is not: stripping out an old fit-out, replacing failed ceiling tiles, levelling a floor that has been patched three times, and upgrading services that no longer meet current regulations all land before any of the new work begins. Contractors on our office refurbishment index spend most of their time in exactly this territory.

Location

Central London prices higher than a regional business park for the same drawings. Restricted delivery windows, single goods lifts, out-of-hours working in occupied buildings, congestion and waste charges, and a tighter labour market all compound. If you are comparing a London option with a regional one, compare the full occupancy cost rather than the rate alone. The register lists fit-out contractors in London and Greater Manchester side by side, on the same data.

Programme

A compressed programme is bought, not wished for. Night and weekend working, parallel trades, accelerated procurement of long-lead items such as glazed partitions and bespoke joinery, and the contingency a contractor prices against that risk all sit inside the rate. Where a lease expiry sets the date, tell tenderers on day one.

What a headline rate leaves out

A £/sq ft figure is a construction number. Several substantial costs sit outside it, and they are the ones that surprise first-time occupiers.

• VAT at the prevailing rate, on the whole works value.
• Professional fees — designer, cost consultant, project manager, principal designer, building control and any specialist acoustic or fire engineering.
• Loose furniture, sometimes called FF&E, unless it is explicitly in the contract.
• IT and audio-visual hardware, licensing and commissioning, as opposed to the containment and power the fit-out provides.
• Landlord costs — licence to alter, landlord's surveyor fees, and any reinstatement obligation written into the lease.
• Dilapidations on the space you are leaving, which frequently arrives in the same financial year.

Building a budget you can defend

Start from area, not aspiration. Take the net internal area from the lease plan, pick the band that matches the brief honestly, and multiply. A 5,000 sq ft office at a mid-specification £60 to £90 per square foot gives a construction range of £300,000 to £450,000 before VAT and fees. That is arithmetic on the published ranges above, not a quote.

Then add the layers a construction rate excludes:

1. Professional fees, as a percentage of works agreed with your cost consultant.
2. Furniture, IT and audio-visual, priced separately from real supplier quotations.
3. A contingency, sized against how much you know about the building's condition.
4. Landlord and lease costs, including any reinstatement liability at the end of the term.
5. VAT on the lot.

The number that comes out is the one to take to a board. The construction figure on its own is the number that gets a project approved and then re-approved six weeks later.

Retail, hospitality and other sectors

Office rates are the most widely published, but the same procurement logic applies elsewhere. What changes is which package dominates the cost.

Retail and shopfitting

Shop fit-outs are shaped by the shopfront, the brand standard and the trading deadline. Bespoke fixtures, feature lighting and a fixed opening date drive the price far more than floor area does, and landlord shopping-centre rules add fit-out guides, contractor approval and restricted working hours. Start from the shopfitters and shopfitting companies index rather than a general office contractor.

Restaurant and hospitality fit-out

In a restaurant fit-out the kitchen, extraction, drainage, grease management and gas provision usually outweigh the front of house. Ductwork routes and odour abatement often require planning consent and landlord agreement, so they belong in the feasibility stage, not the fit-out stage. Many bar and restaurant schemes are delivered by shopfitting firms, whose joinery workshops already produce the bar fronts and banquette seating.

Industrial, healthcare and education

Warehouse and light industrial fit-outs are dominated by floor slab condition, racking, lighting and dock equipment rather than finishes. Healthcare and education carry compliance-led costs: infection control, medical gas, safeguarding, and specialist ventilation. Both usually want a principal contractor rather than an interiors specialist, which is what the commercial builders index holds.

How to brief contractors so quotes compare

Most tender returns are impossible to compare because each contractor was allowed to invent the scope. Six things fix that, and none of them require a full design package.

1. Issue the same information to everyone, on the same day, with the same deadline.
2. State the area and how it was measured — net internal, gross internal, or the lease plan figure.
3. Fix the specification level in writing, with a reference project or a finishes schedule, rather than the word "good".
4. Give the programme constraints, including lease dates, occupied floors above and below, and access hours.
5. Ask for a package breakdown, not a single total, so you can see where a low bid is thin.
6. Require an exclusions list and a provisional sums list from every tenderer.

Then check who you are inviting. Every company on this register carries its Companies House number, incorporation year and registered address, so you can confirm a firm is active and has been trading longer than the last eighteen months before it prices your job. Read how the register is built if you want to see the method.

Common questions

How much does an office fit-out cost per square foot in the UK?

Industry-published guidance generally puts a basic Category B office fit-out at around £45 to £60 per square foot, a mid-specification scheme at £60 to £90, and a high-specification scheme from £90 to well over £200. The figures are pre-VAT and exclude professional fees.

What is the difference between a Cat A and a Cat B fit-out?

Category A is the landlord-delivered base: raised floors, suspended ceilings, basic lighting, and services capped off ready for a tenant. Category B is the occupier fit-out on top of it, covering layout, meeting rooms, joinery, branding, finishes and furniture.

Who pays for an office fit-out, the landlord or the tenant?

The landlord usually funds Category A works and the tenant funds Category B. Where a landlord contributes to Cat B, it normally arrives as a capital contribution or rent-free period negotiated into the lease, not as a separate build budget.

What is excluded from a fit-out cost per square foot?

A headline rate almost never includes VAT, professional and project management fees, loose furniture, IT and audio-visual equipment, landlord licence-to-alter costs, dilapidations on the outgoing space, or the tenant relocation itself. Each can be a material line.

Are office fit-out costs higher in London?

Generally yes. Labour rates, access restrictions, out-of-hours working, service lift bookings and waste handling all cost more in central London than on a regional business park, and the same specification will price higher for the same square footage.

About these figures

The ranges on this page are industry-published estimates, compiled from cost guidance circulated by UK fit-out contractors, cost consultants and commercial property advisers. They are indicative market bands, not our own measurements, and no figure here is derived from the Companies House data behind the register.

Costs move with materials, labour availability and inflation, and any published band ages. Use them to sanity-check a budget or a tender return, then get a priced quotation from at least three contractors before you commit. If you spot a range that no longer reflects the market, tell us and we will correct it.

Browse the register to build a tender list, or read the companion guide to Cat A and Cat B fit-out.