In short
Two data points per desk is the working rule for an office fit-out: one for the machine, one for the phone, dock or whatever arrives next. On top of the desks, count the room itself: WiFi access points, printers, meeting room screens, CCTV, door entry and the comms cabinet all take outlets of their own.
Cabling is cheapest while the walls are open, so the count that matters is the desks you will have, not the desks you have today.
Somewhere in every fit-out there is a drawing with small crosses on it, and somebody has to decide how many crosses each desk gets. Too few and the office runs on trailing extension leads and unmanaged mini-switches within a year. Too many and money that could have gone on better kit went into wall plates nobody uses.
The per-desk number is genuinely settled, and it is the smallest part of the answer. The counting that decides whether the cabling still fits the office in five years happens away from the desks.
Why two per desk, when everything is wireless anyway
The obvious objection is that laptops roam on WiFi and the desk phone is dying, so why cable desks at all. The answer is what the desk actually looks like in use: a dock or monitor with a wired connection for the video calls that must not stutter, a VoIP handset in the businesses that keep them, and the steady trickle of devices that work better wired, card terminals, label printers, engineering kit, the CAD workstation that moves real files.
One point per desk assumes nothing is ever added. Two costs little more at install time, because the labour of getting a cable to the desk is the cost, and the second cable sharing the same route is nearly free. Three or four per desk is the old standard from the tower-PC era, and for most modern offices it is money better spent elsewhere.
The outlets that are not desks, which is where counts go wrong
Walk the plan and count these before anyone totals the desks:
- WiFi access points, one point each in the ceiling, and the survey decides how many and where
- Printers and multifunction devices, which behave far better wired
- Meeting rooms: the screen, the video bar, and a spare at the table
- CCTV cameras and door entry, which increasingly run on the same cabling
- Reception, and anywhere a visitor or pop-up desk might land
- The comms cabinet itself, with room to grow
These are the outlets people forget, and they are also the ones that hurt most to add later, because they live in ceilings and above door frames rather than conveniently at desk height.
Count the desks you will have, not the desks you have
The expensive part of structured cabling is the disruption: containment, ceiling access, floor boxes, making good. The cable itself is the cheap bit. That economics has one practical consequence, which is that the right time to install capacity is while the ceiling is open, and the right headcount to design for is the one in the business plan, not the one in the room.
A sensible design also leaves spare capacity in the containment and spare ports on the patch panel, so growth is a patch lead rather than a project. If the fit-out is happening anyway, adding a third of the count again as headroom is usually the cheapest insurance the office will ever buy.
How Core Comms can help
We design and install structured data cabling for offices across Manchester, the North West and West Yorkshire, and the point count comes out of a free site survey rather than a rule of thumb: desks, ceilings, meeting rooms and cabinet, walked and counted, then a fixed itemised quote per point. Where the plan includes wireless, the access point positions come from a proper business WiFi design on the same visit, so the ceiling outlets land where the coverage needs them.
If you are staring at a floor plan working out where the crosses go, talk to our team or call 0330 838 1000 and we will count it with you.
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