Downsize office space to reduce costs and increase value

Between 100 and 150 square feet per employee is the 2026 average, down from 225 square feet before 2020 - the single clearest measure of how much hybrid work changed office design.

Regional averages differ: roughly 150–175 in North America, 100–125 in Europe, 75–100 in Asia-Pacific. Density targets only work if desks are shared rather than assigned.

Office space per employee →

Start from attendance, not headcount. Most hybrid organizations can support 2 to 2.3 employees per desk where people come in two or three days a week, though the right number depends on how clustered those days are. Dedalus runs roughly 2:1 across its offices using YAROOMS. A ratio set from wishful policy rather than measured attendance is the usual way this goes wrong.

Desk sharing ratio guide →

Measure attendance, not bookings - a desk reserved and never used counts as full occupancy and makes the office look busier than it is. YAROOMS separates the two: bookings show intent, check-ins show attendance, and the gap between them is usually the number that justifies the decision. Measure by day of week over at least a month; the average hides the Tuesday peak.

Workplace analytics →

Put the booking system in before the desks come out, not after. Once employees can see and reserve availability in advance, removing desks becomes a capacity change rather than a gamble. In YAROOMS, employees book a desk from the floor plan on web or mobile before they travel in, so a full day is visible the evening before rather than discovered at 9am.

Desk booking →

Rent is the visible saving, but utilities, cleaning and maintenance scale with floor area too - model total cost per square foot, not rent alone.

Example: ASEE removed one of four floors at its Bucharest headquarters after replacing 1:1 desk allocation with YAROOMS desk booking and occupancy tracking. Country Leader Adrian Nastase: “we are able to save approximately €200k a year - an amount that would otherwise be spent for rent and maintenance of the extra floor.”

Read the ASEE story →

Usually meeting rooms, and most organizations get this backwards. Typical room utilization runs around 40%, against a realistic target of 75% - meaning nearly half of booked room capacity is recoverable before a single desk is touched. The common pattern is too many large rooms and not enough small ones. YAROOMS reports utilization per room so the decision is made per space, not per floor.

Room booking →

Yes, the two only conflict when desks are assigned. Dedalus relocated its Vienna office to a smaller building at the end of 2021 and replaced dedicated desks with hot desking, using YAROOMS to make a smaller desk pool serve more people. The site then grew from 200 to 300 employees in that smaller building. Dedalus now manages 1,150 bookable spaces for 2,300+ users across 10 offices in YAROOMS.

Technical Solution Manager Kianusch Sayah Karadji: “we left behind everything we did not need anymore: from furniture to working arrangements.”

Read the Dedalus story →

No. If utilization data shows the problem is concentration rather than volume - everyone in on Tuesday and Wednesday, the floor half-empty on Thursday - the fix is spreading attendance, not cutting square footage. Downsizing into a genuine peak creates a worse office at lower cost. YAROOMS hybrid scheduling lets teams set target office days so demand levels out before space decisions are made.

Hybrid workplace →