Meeting rooms serve not only a functional purpose for your organisation, but can give a positive (or negative) impression of your business to external people. Clients, suppliers and potential investors could all attend meetings in your office and the meeting room therefore needs to look suitable.
From a functional perspective, the room’s layout should suit its needs. If you are likely to have a variety of different meeting types in one room, then you need a flexible layout. There are a number of common layouts that suit various situations, depending on where you want the focus of the people in the room to be.
Boardroom Layout
This is the classic meeting layout. You have a boardroom table in the centre of the room with seats around it. This allows for effective meetings between a small to medium sized group of people as the focus is on the group as a whole, as opposed to one particular person. This layout encourages input from everyone in attendance. The key to a good boardroom layout in a meeting room is a solid boardroom table as lots of people will be using it at once.
The negative of this layout is that if you use a large boardroom table, you may not be able to change to different layouts very easily. Also the main focal point in the room is the table so is not the best layout for audiovisual presentations either.
Classroom Style or Theatre Style
If you intend on running and hosting presentations in your meeting room, then this may be the best layout. Theatre style involves rows of seats pointing in one direction, however classroom style involves seats pointing in one direction, but with tables or desks too.
These don’t necessarily encourage group input as the focus is placed on the main speaker at the front of the room.
U-Shape
The U-shape layout involves participants sitting at a U-Shaped table, so they are all facing inwards. This allows the group to discuss ideas, but also allows for the focus to go towards one particular person at the opening of the U, as well as presentation visuals. This does limit the amount of people who can fit in the room, however, as the gap in the middle can take up some space.
Furniture
Here at ADD office, we offer a variety of meeting and boardroom tables and chairs to suit the style of your office. You really want to make sure the tables are sturdy and the chairs are comfortable, as meetings can go on for some time.
The design and feel of your meeting rooms should also match the style of the office as a whole, but suit the needs of the room.
