Meeting room capacity is something that is often overlooked but is key to ensuring the people who attend your event aren’t offended by the limited amount of space or overwhelmed by its vastness. You don’t want to bore them or have them feel too cramped. You want them to feel engaged and comfortable.
Considering you may have to invite clients, employees, and partners to attend, it’s hard to figure out just how many people can fit into your chosen venue. But as you can imagine, larger meeting spaces will be more expensive (and less intimate), so it’s vital that you get this right from the outset.
This guide will give you a better understanding of meeting room capacity so you can make decisions about how many people your ideal venue can hold.
Types Of Meeting Room Setups
There is no universal standard for the use of space in a meeting room. However, some common types of meeting room setups include classroom, theater, U-shape, and boardroom. Each type has its own features and benefits, but most can be adapted to other setups.
Classroom Setup
The classroom setup is ideal for large groups when the focus is on a single speaker or audience. This is because it maximizes seating space while minimizing distractions. That makes it particularly useful for lectures or presentations where everyone will be facing the front of the room and listening to the same speaker.
Theater Setup
This type of setup is similar to a classroom configuration but with less space between seats. This makes the theater setup ideal for smaller groups that are focused on a single speaker or topic.
U-Shape Setup
A U-shaped setup offers an intimate environment that works well for groups that need to work together closely, such as training sessions or workshop-style meetings. The shape of this arrangement allows participants to easily see each other as well as any presentation materials or visuals used during the session. It also provides plenty of space for breakout sessions.
Boardroom Setup
The boardroom setup is suitable for meetings where delegates are involved in discussion or teamwork. It is similar to classroom style but with fewer seats.
Types Of Meeting Room Seating Arrangements
When meeting room space is at a premium, the most efficient use of available space is critical. The type of seating arrangement that you choose can make an enormous difference to the total number of people who can be accommodated comfortably within the same amount of space.
The following are some typical examples of meeting room seating arrangements:
Conference Table Seating
The most common type of meeting room is the conference table seating arrangement. This is just a large table with chairs around it, so the number of seats is equal to the number of chairs. For example, if the table has six chairs around it, then you should never seat more than six people in that room.
Auditorium Style Seating
If your meeting space has auditorium-style seating (chairs without tables) then you can calculate the number of seats by counting the number of individual chairs. For example, if there are 10 rows in an auditorium with 8 chairs per row, then you can have 80 people in that space at one time.
Banquet Style Seating
This style is ideal for celebrations and special events like retirement parties, wedding receptions, and corporate awards ceremonies. The tables are arranged in rows with each row having several tabletops placed together. This allows people to sit together at larger tables instead of only at individual tables with fewer guests per table.
Theater Style Seating
Theater-style seating makes a great choice for conferences when you have a large number of attendees, or if you need to make sure there are no distractions during the performance. You’ll find rows of chairs sitting face forward towards a focal point at the front of the room; this could be the podium or screen. It works best for larger groups where there are more than 20 people.
Classroom Style Seating
The classroom-style layout is similar to the theater setup but with a key difference — desks. Guests sit in rows facing forward with individual desks in front of them. This makes classroom style an excellent choice for workshops with demonstrations or lectures where guests may want to take notes.
U-Shape Style Seating
The U-shape arrangement is great for groups where people need to interact with each other during the meeting. In this arrangement, chairs are arranged in a U shape around a table or other object that is being presented to group members.
Hollow Square Style Seating
A Hollow Square meeting room seating arrangement is when the tables are arranged in a square pattern with an empty area in the middle of the room. The number of guests around the table is determined by the size of the square table and how many people can be seated comfortably on each side of the square.
Boardroom Style Seating
This arrangement is similar to the theater style, but instead of rows of chairs, it has one long table with chairs on either side. This arrangement is ideal for smaller groups where most people will be participating in the meeting and taking notes.
How Is Occupancy Calculated?
Calculating a room’s capacity is not as simple as counting the number of seats. In some cases, an activity will require more space per person than in other cases. For example, people seated for a lecture will take up less space per person than people standing for a cocktail reception.
Space requirements are based on the floor area measured between the walls of the room, and not on the usable space within that area. The usable space within a room varies from one event to another. Space requirements also include consideration for room entryways and any obstructions such as columns or furniture in the event area.
To calculate a room’s capacity for a particular event, divide the square footage of the room by the square footage needed per person attending the event. For example, a 1,000 square-foot ballroom is divided by 3 square feet required per person attending a reception to yield 333 people (1,000 / 3 = 333).
How Do You Find The Maximum Occupancy Of A Meeting Room?
A meeting room’s maximum occupancy is determined by the fire marshall, and the number is posted in the room.
If it’s not posted, then the first step is to determine the square footage of the room. Measure the length and width of feet. Then multiply these two numbers together to get the square footage of the room.
Once you have this number, there are a few options for calculating maximum occupancy:
Divide by 10: The simplest formula is to divide the square footage by 10 (the average size in square feet of one person). For example, if your room is 400 square feet, divide this by 10 to get 40 people.
Divide by 20: Some believe that a person needs 25 sq ft of space in order to feel comfortable. If you use this number instead of 10, it will lower your maximum occupancy calculation. For example, if your room is 400 sq ft, divide this by 20 to get 20 people.
Dividing by 15: A compromise between 10 and 20 is dividing by 15. This will give you a conservative estimate that accounts for both personal space and comfort level.
As a general practice, restrict the “dividing by 20” rule only for meetings scheduled at the last minute. For other regular meetings, try to use the “divide by 10” rule. The reason to do this is because there are often cases when you are forced to switch to a different meeting room because of double-booking errors, or because senior leadership wants to use them for emergency meetings. Picking a smaller room by default could be a problem when you have to move.
It is also generally advisable to pre-book your meeting rooms and share the RSVP with participants as a link or a QR code to check in well in advance so that you can plan for such contingencies.
How Do You Calculate the Meeting Room Ratio?
Many people calculate meeting room capacity by multiplying the length and width of the room. This gives you a number, but is it correct?
A meeting room ratio is the amount of space a person occupies in relation to the amount of space in a room. This ratio helps create an accurate calculation for meeting room capacity.
For example, if you have a 100-square-foot meeting room, and each person will occupy 10 square feet in that space, then your meeting room capacity is 10 people.
The meeting room ratio is useful because it allows you to visualize the impact of having more or fewer people in a room.
For example, say you have a meeting room that seats 12 people, but only 6 people will be attending. The new meeting room ratio would be 2:1. This means that everyone has twice as much space in which to move around and interact with each other.
How To Calculate Meeting Room Capacity With Social Distancing
Most people think of meeting room capacity as the number of chairs in a room or the number of people that fit around a table. The answer, however, is not so simple. Many factors affect how many people can be accommodated in a meeting room, including the furniture layout and the type of event.
The most common question is how to calculate meeting room capacity with social distancing.
At a time when businesses are going “zero-touch“, here are some tips to help you manage meeting room capacity post the coronavirus pandemic:
The size and shape of the space will determine how many people can be safely accommodated in your meeting room. L-shaped tables and round tables take up less space than rectangular tables.
How much space do you need for social distancing? Most health experts recommend at least 6 6-foot distance between people. If you’ve got a small conference room, it may be best to hold virtual meetings instead until group gatherings resume.
Consider replacing hard chairs with comfortable floor seats so guests can spread out more easily when they sit down for conversations.
You’d do well to start thinking about capacity as an early design consideration, even before getting into the details of layout, room features, and furniture decided upon. That way, you can take the key measurements into account without having to plan your space around them. The result is a space that fits your business needs and offers the functionality your employees or clients would expect while guaranteeing they are able to fit into the room at once.
