Meeting Room Design in Ireland: Capacity Is More Than a Chair Count

A meeting room can look complete on a furniture plan and still fail during its first busy week. The table fits. Eight chairs fit. Yet someone blocks the door when they pull back, the far seat disappears from the camera, and the room becomes uncomfortable halfway through a client presentation.

For Irish office fit-outs, capacity should be agreed across ventilation, access, furniture and audiovisual performance before the room is labelled or booked. The most useful question is: how many people can participate comfortably in the meeting this room is intended to support?

By Ciarán Ardagh, Ardagh Agencies • Published 2 November 2026

Juno table and Supra upholstered chairs, from Ondarreta’s current collection. Manufacturer styling image; it illustrates furniture relationships rather than a verified Irish meeting-room installation. Image: Ondarreta. View the current Juno collection.

Why this matters in an Irish office refurbishment

In a refurbished office, a new enclosed room inherits conditions that the furniture drawing may not reveal: existing air distribution, the position of an opening window, a narrow approach, or a ceiling already crowded with services. Moving a partition changes the room; it does not automatically adapt those systems.

Our proposal is to record two things separately in the brief: the room’s assessed occupancy limits and its intended meeting use. A face-to-face review, a hybrid presentation and a workshop may need different layouts even when the headcount is identical. This is a design coordination method, not a regulatory formula.

1. Agree the ventilation assumptions before the seat count

The Health and Safety Authority’s ventilation guidance explains that Irish workplace regulations require sufficient fresh air in enclosed workplaces. It also distinguishes air conditioning from fresh-air ventilation: cooling a room alone does not establish that enough outdoor air reaches its occupants.

The HSA recommends maintaining CO₂ below 1,000 ppm as an indicator of adequate ventilation and identifies concentrations above 1,400 ppm as likely to indicate poor ventilation. These are ventilation indicators, not a complete measure of indoor air quality or a standalone way to certify room capacity. Monitors also have limitations, particularly in sparsely occupied or large spaces and where other CO₂ sources exist.

The HSA’s Code of Practice for Indoor Air Quality explicitly includes refurbishment and upgrading within its planning and design advice. It sets out an assessment approach and the level of competency needed for different workplace complexities.

At design review, ask the services engineer to identify the occupancy and operating assumptions that the proposed room can support. Record how those assumptions will be checked after installation. A room name such as “Boardroom 8” should follow that coordination.

2. Draw the occupied room, including the furniture in motion

A chair tucked under a table is a storage position. It tells us little about the space someone needs while sitting, standing or passing behind a colleague.

Develop an occupied furniture plan alongside the tidy presentation plan. Show chair pull-back, the door swing, routes to each place, presentation positions and access to controls. Check the table base as carefully as its top: rails and legs can compromise a seating position that appears generous in plan.

The National Disability Authority’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design promotes checking emerging designs with a diverse user panel. Its Building for Everyone: Facilities in Buildings also cautions that equipment added after completion can end up obstructing access and manoeuvring space. That is a useful lesson for meeting rooms that acquire extra chairs, screens and storage.

Apply that thinking to the actual table and chair combination. Can people reach power and meeting controls? Is there a choice of suitable seating? Can a wheelchair user participate at the table alongside colleagues? Agree the detailed clearances with the project’s access specialist rather than relying on a generic furniture spacing rule.

3. Treat the camera as another view on the furniture plan

A long table may work for conversation across the room while leaving remote colleagues looking at profiles, overlapping faces or the back of a laptop. Start the audiovisual review while table geometry and orientation are still changeable.

Microsoft’s room-planning guidance describes curved tables and front-facing arrangements as options for improving connection with remote participants. It treats layout, camera coverage, displays and audio as a coordinated experience. Those are principles to test against the brief; a curved table is not automatically the right answer.

A 2023 ACM study by Tang and colleagues evaluated an experimental hybrid meeting system called Perspectives against other interface layouts. It reported benefits around interaction and co-presence. It was a technology study, not an Irish workplace survey or proof that a particular furniture product improves collaboration.

The practical test is straightforward: run a call with someone outside the room. Ask them to identify every speaker and read representative shared content. Test the least favourable seat, not only the chair nearest the camera.

4. Coordinate acoustic comfort with the way the room operates

During the same trial, listen for speech clarity, intrusive background sound and noise reaching neighbouring work areas. Test the room with its normal ventilation running and its door in the intended position.

Soft seating and surface treatments can form part of an acoustic strategy, but their presence does not establish speech privacy. Ask the acoustic consultant to distinguish sound absorption within the room from sound isolation between spaces. Coordinate any treatment with ventilation outlets, lighting and maintenance access.

A worked example: the eight-chair room

Consider a hypothetical refurbishment brief for eight local participants plus remote attendees. The initial drawing shows eight chairs around a rectangular table. During the mock-up, two positions have obstructed camera views and the route behind the occupied chairs is awkward. The engineer has not yet confirmed the ventilation assumptions.

Adding a better camera may address one issue. Changing the table footprint may address another. Neither resolves the outstanding services question. The team should compare revised layouts and, if necessary, a lower booking capacity before committing to the furniture order.

The lesson is to resolve the limiting condition through design or an agreed operating limit. A smaller number on the booking system can be a successful outcome when it accurately describes a room that works.

Seven questions to bring to the next design review

• What meeting types and durations is this room intended to support?

• Who has confirmed its ventilation assumptions and assessed occupancy limits?

• Does the occupied furniture plan preserve usable routes and access to every place?

• Can a diverse range of users reach the table, controls and power comfortably?

• Can remote participants see and hear people from every intended seat?

• Have speech clarity, neighbouring-room privacy and normal services noise been checked?

• Do the room sign, booking system, furniture layout and handover information describe the same agreed use?

Use this checklist to structure a project conversation or share it with a design team. It is an editorial coordination aid, not a substitute for project-specific technical assessment.

Questions architects and clients often ask

How many people should an office meeting room accommodate?

Agree the number from the room’s assessed limits and intended use, with the architect, services engineer and relevant access, fire and audiovisual specialists. Floor area and chair count alone cannot establish a suitable capacity.

Does a low CO₂ reading prove a meeting room works?

No. It does not establish access, evacuation arrangements, acoustic privacy or camera coverage. Use monitoring within the ventilation assessment and review the other performance questions separately.

From the room brief to the furniture specification

Before requesting a furniture quotation, issue a coordinated room brief with the intended meeting use, agreed participant numbers, occupied layout and audiovisual requirements. Ask suppliers to demonstrate the actual table base, chair dimensions, finish and power arrangement against it.

Ardagh Agencies works with architects and interior designers in Ireland on furniture selection, including Ondarreta. For a live commercial project, contact us through the website to discuss furniture options and samples available in Dublin. Ardagh Agencies represents Ondarreta; the manufacturer image is included with that commercial relationship disclosed.

Related reading: Sensory Choice in Irish Offices: Beyond the Quiet Room and Circular Office Fit-Outs in Ireland: Design for the Next Use.

Sources and scope

Sources checked 2 November 2026. Published guidance and research are identified above; the room example, coordination method and checklist are Ardagh Agencies’ editorial interpretation.

• Health and Safety Authority: Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality; Code of Practice for Indoor Air Quality (2023).

• Centre for Excellence in Universal Design, National Disability Authority: Building for Everyone, Booklet 6, Facilities in Buildings.

• Microsoft Learn: Meeting room guidance for Teams (room-planning guidance).

• Tang et al. (2023): Perspectives: Creating Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meeting Experiences. ACM CSCW, DOI 10.1145/3610200.