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designing conference rooms

Designing Conference Rooms for Growing Companies

What happens to your office if you double or triple the number of people in it? A growing team can have a big effect on how you are designing conference rooms and use your office space. If you’re growing, or expect to grow your headcount, you might want to leave some wiggle room in your office design and layout. The same holds true for your conference rooms. So how do you prepare your conference rooms for growth?

Low Cost Furnishings

Chances are pretty good that all of that growth is going to bring some major furniture purchases. In your current stage, you may not be ready to think through the design of your office when you hit those big headcount milestones. Right now you just need furniture that gets the job done. Low cost office furniture is one place to start. If you only expect your conference rooms to be in their current configuration for the next year or two, super durable and expensive furniture is probably going to be a waste. Buy only enough for what you need right now and save your pennies for that big buildout.

Think Multipurpose and Flexibility

As you grow, your conference room usage and needs are going to change. Anticipating all of those changes can be pretty hard. Will that conference table work in your future space? Will it be big enough, too big, or too small for your next space? The better approach might be to get interchangeable and locking desks that they can double as a conference table when they’re put together. Painting Ideapaint on one of your walls might be useful, but what if you knock down that wall in a year? A whiteboard that can be screwed into the wall, or even a moveable one on casters, provides you with far more options than something more permanent.

Alternate Meeting Spaces

Although we love conference rooms, sometimes the best conference room for a growing company is none at all. Sort of. Building out a conference room is a noisy and disruptive experience for your whole office. Before you make that investment, perhaps there are other options for satisfying your meeting room management needs. Can you put up space dividers and partitions to create a faux room, and then put tables and chairs inside of the room? This provides some privacy and allows for people to congregate and talk without disturbing their officemates. This won’t totally eliminate your need for private meeting rooms, but it will greatly reduce the number that you need. While these aren’t traditional meeting rooms, they serve the purpose and can easily be managed with meeting room scheduling system like Roomzilla.

Light IT

Wiring in your conference room is typically hidden in the walls, under floor tiles, and in the ceiling. It’s a smart investment if you’re keeping everything in place for a few years. But if you’re considering a future renovation or major changes, exposing wires allows you to quickly, easily, and inexpensively install equipment. Installing a projector overhead looks great. However, if you put it on the table instead of overhead, you can save those installation dollars for when your layout is more permanent.

Is your company growing? What are you doing to plan for your future conference room needs? Check out our 6 EASY STEPS TO DESIGNING CONFERENCE ROOMS EBOOK