Office Fit Out & Refurbishment
An office is never just an office.
It’s where ideas are shared, decisions are made, and work culture takes shape. So when the space isn’t working as hard as the people inside it, something needs to change.
Spacio is an office fit out and refurbishment company with over 40 years of experience turning workplaces into spaces that actively support the people and businesses using them.
From a completely blank canvas fit out to an existing office refurbishment that’s ready for its next chapter, we bring strategy, design and delivery together to create workplaces that look brilliant, function beautifully and feel unmistakably yours.
Complete office fit out services
One project. One team. Plenty of moving parts.
A successful office fit out involves a lot more than choosing finishes and moving desks around.
There are layouts to rethink, services to coordinate, approvals to secure, furniture to specify and a seemingly endless list of details that only become obvious when somebody gets them wrong.
Our job is to make sure they don’t.
We bring the different parts of your office design and fit out together under one roof
Giving you one experienced team from the first conversation through to the final handover. Depending on your project, that can include:
- Workplace consultancy and brief development
- Building appraisal and feasibility
- Office space planning and test fits
- Concept design and 3D visualisation
- Mechanical and electrical design
- Cost planning and technical specification
- Landlord and building control approvals
- Cat A, Cat A+ and Cat B office fit outs
- Flooring, ceilings, lighting and partitions
- Bespoke joinery and breakout spaces
- Kitchens and tea points
- Office furniture
- IT, data and audiovisual coordination
- Construction and project management
- Move planning
- Handover, snagging and aftercare
The result? Fewer gaps between disciplines, no nasty surprises and a much smoother route from “what if?” to “when can we move in?”
Office fit out or office refurbishment?
Revolution or refresh? Both can be transformative.
Sometimes you need to start from scratch. Sometimes the bones of the space are good, but the way it works has stopped keeping pace with the business.
Not sure which camp you fall into? That’s fine. You don’t need to arrive with the answer. Finding it is part of what we do.
An office fit out takes an empty, shell or partially completed commercial space and turns it into somewhere your business can actually call home.
That could mean transforming a completely blank floor into a fully functioning workplace, or taking an existing Cat A space and building the meeting rooms, kitchens, collaboration areas, furniture, branding and technology that make it yours.
It’s usually the route to take if you’re:
- Moving into a new office
- Relocating as your business grows
- Taking space in a new development
- Starting with a shell or Cat A workplace
- Creating a completely new working environment
Already in the right building but no longer in the right workplace? An office refurbishment gives the space you have another life.
That might mean rethinking the layout, creating better spaces for hybrid working, updating tired finishes or taking the entire office back to the drawing board.
It’s not about giving the walls a new lick of paint and hoping for the best. It’s about asking what could work better and then doing something about it.
An office refurbishment might be right if you want to:
- Use your space more effectively
- Accommodate a growing or changing team
- Support new working patterns
- Improve employee experience
- Modernise an ageing office
- Bring the workplace closer to your brand
- Stay put rather than relocate
Cat A, Cat A+ and Cat B office fit outs
Same building. Very different starting points.
Office fit out terminology has a habit of making a relatively simple idea sound more complicated than it needs to be.
Here’s the short version.
A Category A office fit out typically gives you the basic internal specification needed to make the space functional, potentially including:
- Raised access flooring
- Ceilings
- Basic lighting
- Mechanical and electrical services
- Fire systems
- Internal finishes
- Washrooms and shared facilities
It creates a usable commercial space, but not yet your workplace.
It takes the basic Cat A environment and adds enough furniture, meeting space and workplace infrastructure to make it ready to occupy.
For landlords, it can make a space much easier for prospective tenants to imagine themselves in. For occupiers, it can provide a quicker route to a ready-made workplace.
A Cat B office fit out takes the functional shell and turns it into a workplace built around your people, brand and ways of working.
That can include:
- Meeting rooms and private offices
- Collaboration and breakout areas
- Kitchens and social spaces
- Internal partitions
- Bespoke joinery
- Specialist lighting
- Furniture
- Branding and graphics
- IT, data and audiovisual systems
- Acoustic treatments
- Final finishes and decoration
Our office fit out and refurbishment process
A beautiful concept is only useful if it can be built, afforded and delivered without turning your working week upside down.
That’s why our process brings creativity and practicality together from day one. No dramatic reveal followed by an awkward conversation about budget. No disappearing act between design and construction.
The Spacio approach: People first. Always.
For us, human-centred design means thinking about how the workplace feels and functions for the people using it.
We take into consideration focus, movement, comfort, collaboration, privacy, wellbeing and all the other everyday interactions that determine whether an office really works.
Get those things right, and the business benefits tend to follow.
How much does an office fit out cost?
The answer nobody loves: it depends. The useful answer: we can help you work it out.
There’s no sensible single price for an office fit out. A 5,000 sq ft refurbishment using much of what is already there is a very different project from a premium Cat B fit out starting with an empty shell.
Costs can be shaped by:
- Floor area
- Existing condition
- Mechanical and electrical requirements
- Level of specification
- Furniture
- Technology
- Bespoke joinery
- Site access
- Programme
- Landlord requirements
- Whether the office remains occupied during the works
That doesn’t mean the budget has to remain a mystery. We build cost planning into the design process so you can see where money is being spent and make informed decisions while there is still time to make them.
And if the wish list and budget stop seeing eye to eye? We look at where value can be engineered without stripping the character or purpose out of the design.
Still need an initial ballpark figure? Use our handy cost calculator tool.
Refurbishing an office without turning everything upside down
Your business still has to run while we’re improving where it runs from. For many businesses, shutting the doors for several weeks simply isn’t an option. We get that.
We think about business continuity at the beginning of the project, rather than discovering halfway through that 60 people still need somewhere to work on Monday morning.
Where the space and scope allow, office refurbishment can be planned around day-to-day operations through:
- Phased works
- Floor-by-floor delivery
- Temporary team moves
- Evening or weekend working
- Segregated construction areas
- Planned periods of remote working
How long does an office fit out take?
Long enough to do it properly. Planned tightly enough not to drag on.
Project timelines vary. A smaller office refurbishment can be completed relatively quickly, while a large, high-specification fit out with significant building services and approvals naturally takes longer.
The overall programme can include:
- Initial consultation
- Workplace strategy
- Design development
- Technical detailing
- Approvals
- Procurement
- Construction
- Furniture installation
- Testing and handover
The important part is knowing the programme before work starts.
We identify dependencies, long-lead items and potential hold-ups early, then build a realistic schedule around them.
No vague promises. No fantasy completion dates. Just a plan everyone can actually work to.
Sustainable office fit out and refurbishment
Sustainable workplace design isn’t about adding a few plants at the end and calling it green. It starts much earlier.
Before ripping anything out, we look at what can sensibly be retained, reused or repurposed. When new materials, furniture or systems are needed, we can help you explore options that balance environmental impact with quality, performance and budget.
That might involve:
- Reusing existing furniture
- Retaining suitable elements of the current fit out
- Choosing durable, responsibly sourced materials
- Reducing construction waste
- Improving lighting and energy efficiency
- Designing spaces that can adapt rather than constantly being rebuilt
- Specifying products with credible environmental credentials
Sometimes the most sustainable material is the one already sitting in the building.
Featured office fit out projects
Enough talking. Here’s what it looks like when it all comes together.
No two Spacio projects look the same. And they shouldn’t. Each one starts with a different business, a different challenge and a different group of people who need the space to work for them.
Office fit out across London and East Anglia
Great workplaces aren’t confined to one postcode.
From our Essex HQ and London studio, we work with businesses across London and the East of England to create workplaces designed around their people.
Our home turf. We deliver office fit out and refurbishment projects across Chelmsford, Colchester, Basildon, Harlow, Southend and the wider county.
Office fit out and refurbishment for businesses across Cambridge and Cambridgeshire, from professional services to science and technology.
Workplace design, fit out and refurbishment across Ipswich, Suffolk and the surrounding region.
End-to-end office fit out and refurbishment for businesses, landlords and property teams across London.
Why Spacio?
Forty years of learning what makes workplaces work.
We’ve been doing this for more than four decades.
Long enough to know that no two projects behave exactly the same, that the smallest details often make the biggest difference, and that a good workplace needs to survive well beyond the photoshoot.
We see the whole picture
Strategy, design, technical detail, construction, furniture and aftercare all connect.
So do we.
We put people at the centre
Not as a slogan; as a design principle.
We want to understand what your people actually need before deciding what their workplace should look like.
We design with reality in mind
We love ambitious ideas.
We love them even more when they can be built properly, delivered on time and made to work within the budget.
We stay close to the project
You’ll know who is responsible, what is happening and what comes next.
We’re still here afterwards
A finished project is the start of people actually using the space.
If something needs attention once they do, we want to know about it.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
We know that planning and delivering a workplace project can raise plenty of questions — from timelines and budgets to technology, sustainability, and how the process works in practice. Our FAQs are designed to give you clear, straightforward answers to the things we’re asked most often.
Potentially, quite a lot.
An office fit out can include workplace strategy, space planning, interior design, mechanical and electrical services, partitions, flooring, ceilings, lighting, meeting rooms, kitchens, furniture, technology, branding and final finishes.
Exactly what you need depends on the building and what is already there. We’ll help establish that before you start paying for things you don’t need.
A fit out generally starts with an empty or partially completed commercial space and turns it into a finished workplace.
A refurbishment works with an existing office and improves, updates or completely rethinks it.
There is plenty of crossover between the two, so if you’re unsure which label applies to your project, don’t worry. We care much more about what you need the space to do.
If you’re an occupier creating a fully finished workplace, you’ll most likely be looking at a Cat B fit out.
Cat A usually provides the functional basics of the space, while Cat B adds everything needed to tailor it around your business.
The existing specification varies from building to building, so we’ll review what’s already there before deciding what needs to happen next.
Cat A+ sits between Cat A and Cat B.
It creates a furnished, ready-to-occupy office without the same degree of bespoke design as a full Cat B fit out.
It’s particularly useful for landlords looking to offer tenant-ready space or businesses that value speed and flexibility.
There isn’t one universal rate. Floor area, building condition, specification, services, furniture, technology and programme can all affect the final figure.
Once we understand the project, we can develop a realistic budget and show you how it breaks down.
In the meantime, our cost calculator tool can give you a rough ballpark figure.
A smaller refurbishment may take a matter of weeks. A larger and more complex office fit out can take several months.
Design, approvals and procurement also need to be factored into the programme, so we map the full journey rather than only estimating the construction period.
Potentially, yes.
Depending on the project, we can look at phased delivery, out-of-hours work, and temporary team moves to keep disruption as low as possible.
We’ll discuss those constraints before developing the programme.
Absolutely. Our workplace consultancy and space planning team can assess headcount, working patterns, growth plans and the types of environments your people need before determining an appropriate space requirement.
That can be particularly useful if you’re considering a move and haven’t committed to a property yet.
Yes. Spacio can take the project from strategy and design through technical development, construction, furniture and handover.
That joined-up approach is central to the way Spacio currently describes its wider design-and-build offer.
Let’s make your space remarkable.
You might have a fully formed brief. You might have a floor plan, a rough budget and 15 different opinions from the leadership team. Or you might simply know that your current office isn’t working anymore.
Wherever you’re starting from, start with a conversation.
Contact us