Office fit-out joinery: reception desks, storage and meeting rooms

Domestic joinery is judged on craft and appearance. Commercial joinery has to add compliance, durability under heavy shared use, and installation on a programme that cannot slip because a business is moving in on a fixed date.

That changes the specification. Thicker carcasses, commercial-grade ironmongery rated for high cycle counts, harder finishes, and details designed so a damaged panel can be replaced without dismantling a whole run.

The reception desk carries the brand and is the first thing anyone touches. It also has to work as a workstation: monitor and keyboard space, storage for post and deliveries, power and data, and a comfortable seated position for a full day.

Accessibility matters here. Good practice is to provide a lower section at around 760 millimetres with knee clearance so a wheelchair user can be served properly, alongside the standard 1,100-millimetre counter. Design it in from the start rather than adding an awkward shelf later.

Built-in office storage should be planned around what actually accumulates: files, stationery, IT spares, marketing material, coats, deliveries and personal items. Open shelving is fine for display; everything else works better behind doors.

Lockable storage is increasingly the requirement, particularly with hot-desking. Personal lockers with a consistent key or code system, and lockable cupboards for confidential material, need planning against the actual headcount rather than the current one.

A boardroom needs credenza storage, an AV bay with ventilation and cable routes, and often integrated power and data at the table. Screens and video-conference kit should have a designed home, not a trailing cable across a floor.

Acoustics are as important as looks. Fabric-faced acoustic panels, slatted timber with an absorbent backing and solid doors with perimeter seals reduce both reverberation inside the room and speech transfer out of it. In a glazed meeting room, joinery is often the only place absorption can go.

Office tea points get more use in a week than a domestic kitchen gets in a month, and they get no gentleness. Specify hard-wearing worktops, moisture-resistant carcasses, sealed edges everywhere, commercial-grade hinges and a bin arrangement that suits waste separation.

Plan for the boiling water tap or urn, the dishwasher, and the queue. A one-metre tea point in a fifty-person office is a bottleneck; two shorter points in different zones usually work better than one long one.

Commercial interiors are subject to fire safety requirements that domestic work is not. Wall and ceiling linings may need to meet specified surface spread of flame or reaction-to-fire classifications, and joinery must not obstruct escape routes, fire doors or extinguisher positions.

In leased premises the landlord will usually require a licence to alter, approved drawings, evidence of contractor insurance and method statements, and a commitment on reinstatement at lease end. Building that approval time into the programme is essential; it is a common cause of delay.

Most fit-outs happen while people are trying to work, or in a building with restricted access hours. That means evening and weekend working, goods-lift bookings, protection of common parts, dust and noise control, and pieces sized to fit the lift rather than the room.

Sequencing matters: joinery normally follows partitions, first fix and ceilings, and precedes final decoration and furniture delivery. Agreeing that sequence with the main contractor and the building manager before mobilisation avoids most on-site conflict.

Costs vary widely with specification, but as an indicative guide a bespoke reception desk commonly runs £6,000-£20,000, boardroom credenza and AV storage £4,000-£15,000, and a tea point £5,000-£15,000. Access restrictions and out-of-hours working add to labour.

Typical programme is two to three weeks for design and approvals, four to eight weeks in the workshop, and a few days to two weeks on site depending on scope. Landlord approvals should start as early as possible because they run in parallel with nothing.

An office interior is photographed once and then used hard for a decade. The specification that survives is the one designed to be maintained: replaceable panels rather than bonded assemblies, standard sheet sizes so a damaged door can be remade, and a recorded schedule of finishes, colours, edge details and ironmongery references handed over at completion.

Ask for spares at the outset - a few extra door fronts, a box of matching handles, a litre of the topcoat for touching in. They cost very little inside the original order and are frequently impossible to match two years later when a colour has been discontinued.

Where a fit-out will be reinstated at lease end, keep fixings and interfaces reversible. Mechanically fixed joinery that can be unbolted and removed leaves far less dilapidation cost than glued and plastered-in work, which is a genuine saving worth designing for on day one.