Office Refurbishment Cost in 2026: Price per m², What It Includes and What Moves It

Office refurbishment cost per m² and per sq ft in 2026

Laxton's prices a refurbishment per m² of gross internal floor area. It excludes external works, professional fees and VAT. It also lists a London location factor of about 1.09, which is where the 9 % comes from.

The London column is our arithmetic, rounded to £10. Your building may sit either side of the factor.

Here is what that means for a 500 m² floor, about 5,380 sq ft.

Our own 2026 London rates for a Cat B fit-out on a Cat A floor are £90, £128 and £185 per sq ft all in. They overlap this range. They also include furniture, AV and IT, so compare ranges, not lines. The full table is in our office fit out cost per sq ft guide.

For your own floor, try the office fit-out cost calculator.

What a refresh, a reconfiguration and a full refurbishment include

A band from £1,000 to £1,800 per m² is wide because "refurbishment" covers three different jobs. Most projects are one of these, and each one costs more than the last.

1. Refresh. New floor, wall and ceiling finishes in the layout you have. Walls, services and lighting layout stay as they are.
2. Reconfigure. A refresh plus a new layout: partitions, doors, joinery, lighting and power moved to suit, and new data cabling.
3. Full refurbishment. A reconfiguration plus replacement air conditioning and ventilation, so the floor performs like a new one.

To price a refresh from real lines, use Knight Frank's cost table. It prints each fit-out line in pounds per sq ft. We added the lines up by level. The table assumes a Cat A starting floor and Central London prices, so treat it as a guide to proportions, not a quote.

A refresh at £13 to £42 per sq ft is about £140 to £450 per m². All four groups together come to £58 to £157 per sq ft, or about £620 to £1,690 per m².

Laxton's starts higher because the two sources count different things. Use the sum as a floor for the lines you know you need, not as a total.

Refurbishing while your team is in the office

Many businesses that refurbish are staying because they have a lease to run or a building they own. Their team stays too. That changes what the work costs and how it runs.

The works go in phases, one zone at a time. Noisy work moves to nights and weekends. Each phase keeps its own escape routes, toilets, power and data live. Out-of-hours labour costs more per hour, and phasing lengthens the programme. Dust screens and temporary protection are extra lines.

What you save is a decant. There is no second floor to rent, no move out and no move back. Our guide to office refurbishment while occupied sets out the phasing and the safety planning.

Beaumont House in High Street Kensington shows a hard deadline. The client had five weeks left on the lease. We rebuilt 750 sq m in three weeks for £350K and handed over with zero snags.

Portsoken House in Aldgate shows works around other people. We delivered 1,550 sq m with a full mechanical and electrical package in seven months. The other floors stayed let, so the noisy work ran at night and at weekends.

These are two project values, not rates. A project value divided by its area says nothing about your floor, so we price yours from a survey.

What pushes an office refurbishment cost up or down

Six things move a refurbishment between the bottom and the top of the band.

1. Air conditioning and ventilation. It is the largest building-services line in Knight Frank's table, at £15 to £25 per sq ft. Replacing it is the step from reconfiguration to full refurbishment.
2. Asbestos. HSE says asbestos may be in any building built or refurbished before 2000. Breaking into the fabric can need a refurbishment survey first. Under regulation 5 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, work cannot start without an assessment.
3. Your landlord's consent. Most leases need a licence for alterations before any change to partitions or services. Read licence for alterations explained before you fix a programme.
4. Building control and fire strategy. Moving walls changes escape routes and compartments. Our Building Regulations for an office fit-out guide lists what is checked.
5. Rooms and finishes. Every enclosed room needs walls, a door, lighting and ventilation. Bespoke joinery and stone move a floor from the lower band to the upper.
6. Out-of-hours working. Phasing and night work add labour and programme time, as above.

Internal alterations usually do not need planning permission. A listed building needs listed building consent for significant works.

A project that lasts longer than 30 working days with more than 20 workers on site at once is notifiable to HSE. So is one over 500 person days. The client holds that duty. Add VAT at 20 % on top of every figure in this guide.

Companies can claim full expensing on new plant and machinery bought from 1 April 2023. Which refurbishment items qualify depends on the work, so ask your accountant before you set the budget.

Refurbish or relocate: the cost lines side by side

Both routes pay for building work. The difference is the set of costs that exist only if you move. Cost both on the same floor area, then compare the totals.

SDLT on a new non-residential lease has two parts. The premium is taxed from £150,000 and the rent is taxed on its net present value from £150,000. Below those thresholds nothing is due.

Staying works best when the lease has years to run, the location suits the team and the building is sound. Moving works better when the building cannot take the layout you need. Our guide to office relocation cost prices the move side line by line, and our office relocation fit-out checklist covers it step by step.

Budgeting your refurbishment in five steps

You can do the first two this month. The rest need a surveyor on site.

1. Survey and asbestos. Find the asbestos register and book a refurbishment survey where walls or ceilings will be opened.
2. Brief from how the team works. Headcount, meeting rooms, quiet space and the busiest day of the week.
3. Layout options. Test two layouts against cost before one is fixed.
4. Price by element. Ask for a figure built unit by unit, so a cut is visible line by line.
5. Programme around the business. Decide which zones close in which weeks, and what runs out of hours.

Want the sum for your floor before you brief anyone? Get a fixed figure. We price from the plan and your dates.