How many rooms fit in your floor area?
The arithmetic that decides whether a tenancy works, done before you sign rather than after the architect has been paid.
The short answer
The question every practice owner asks an agent is how big the tenancy is. The question that actually matters is how many rooms it holds, and the two are related by a number nobody mentions on the listing.
Key points
- Net room areas are the easy part. Circulation adds roughly 25 to 30 per cent on top.
- A 180 m² tenancy is about four consulting rooms, treatment, both utilities and reception.
- The rooms people forget are the dirty utility, the store and a staff room out of earshot.
- Size the waiting room for your busiest hour, not your average one. Averages do not queue.
The question every practice owner asks an agent is how big the tenancy is. The question that actually matters is how many rooms it holds, and the two are related by a number nobody mentions on the listing.
Net, gross, and the gap between them
Add up the rooms you want and you get a net area. That is not the tenancy you need, because it ignores everything between the rooms: corridors, door swings, the wall thicknesses themselves, the space in front of a reception counter, and the turning circles that make a plan usable by someone in a wheelchair.
For a consulting practice, allow roughly 28 per cent on top of net for circulation and structure. An open-plan allied health tenancy runs a little lower, around 22 per cent, because the floor does more than one job. A heavily subdivided specialist suite can push past 30.
That factor is why a tenancy that looks generous on paper can fail: a long thin floor plate or a column grid in the wrong place spends your circulation allowance before you have drawn a room.
The rooms, and what each really takes
- Consulting room, 12–14 m². Desk at a comfortable angle, an examination couch with access down one long side, a basin, and a third person in the room without shuffling.
- Treatment room, 16–18 m². Working access to both sides of the patient, procedure lighting, instrument bench.
- Reception and records, 14–20 m². Counter with an accessible section, plus the back of house nobody plans: printers, scanner, consumables, staff bags.
- Waiting, 1.4 m² per seat. Prams, walking frames, and the gap people leave between strangers.
- Clean utility, 6–8 m². Stock, preparation, vaccine fridge.
- Dirty utility, 6–8 m². Waste, used instruments, slop hopper. Not the same room as clean.
- Accessible WC, 6 m². Not optional, and it rules out some tenancies on its own.
- Staff room, 12–16 m². Genuinely out of earshot of the waiting room.
- Store, 5–8 m². The room that gets deleted and then reappears as boxes in a corridor.
Three worked examples
120 m². Roughly 94 m² net. Three consulting rooms, a small treatment room, reception with about ten waiting seats, one utility and an accessible WC. It works, but it is tight, and combining clean and dirty utility to make it fit is the compromise that causes an accreditation problem later. Better to drop a consulting room than to merge those two.
180 m². Roughly 140 m² net, and the size at which general practice starts to breathe. Four consulting rooms, a treatment room, clean and dirty utility, reception with fourteen to sixteen seats, accessible WC, a staff room and a store.
250 m². Roughly 195 m² net. Six consulting rooms, treatment, both utilities, a second WC, a proper staff room, storage, and enough waiting for the Monday morning described below. This is the size most six-doctor practices should be looking for rather than trying to force into 200.
The mistakes that recur
Three errors account for most of the plans that have to be redrawn, and all three are decisions rather than drafting problems.
Sizing the waiting room on the average. Averages do not queue. Count the seats you need when every room is running, both doctors are behind, and a nurse is doing immunisations. That is the number.
Merging clean and dirty utility. It is the single most common finding raised against an existing practice, and it is created at plan stage by someone trying to recover six square metres.
Deleting the store. Stock does not stop existing because it has no room. It moves into a corridor, which is a path of travel, which is a problem.
You can put your own room count through the space planner and get a floor area with circulation included, which is the number to take to an agent rather than the net one.
Sources and further reading
Room areas we use for planning clinical tenancies, read against the RACGP Standards and the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines. Indicative for planning, not a substitute for a plan drawn on your actual floor plate.
Standards for general practices, 5th edition. The physical-practice requirements behind general practice accreditation.
Room-by-room design guidance and standard components used across Australian health projects, including consulting, treatment and sterilising rooms.
Source for AS/NZS 4815 and 4187 reprocessing, AS 1428.1 access and AS 1668.2 ventilation. The standards themselves are purchased, not free.
Questions
How many consulting rooms fit in 180 square metres?
About four, alongside a treatment room, clean and dirty utility, reception with fourteen to sixteen waiting seats, an accessible WC, a staff room and a store. That assumes a regular floor plate; a long narrow tenancy or an awkward column grid will cost you a room.
How much circulation should I allow on a clinic floor plan?
Roughly 28 per cent on top of your net room areas for a consulting practice, covering corridors, door swings, wall thicknesses and accessible turning circles. An open allied health floor runs nearer 22 per cent, a heavily subdivided specialist suite can exceed 30.
How big should a consulting room be?
Twelve to fourteen square metres. That holds a desk with the practitioner and patient at a comfortable angle, an examination couch with access down at least one long side, a basin, and a third person such as a parent, carer or interpreter without anyone squeezing past.
How many waiting seats do I need?
Plan at about 1.4 square metres a seat, which accounts for prams, walking frames and the space people leave between strangers. Count the seats for your busiest hour rather than your average one: every room running, the doctors behind, and a nurse doing immunisations.
What is the minimum size for a medical practice?
Around 120 square metres will hold three consulting rooms, a small treatment room, reception and one utility. Below that you start merging spaces that should not be merged, and combining clean and dirty utility to save six square metres is the compromise that causes trouble at accreditation.
Send us the floor plan
A site assessment tells you what the tenancy can take and what it will cost to get there, ideally before you have signed for it.