How to set up a meeting room

A meeting room is one of the most important spaces in an office. It’s where people go to collaborate, brainstorm, and make some of the most important business decisions.

A well-designed meeting room allows people to be productive, collaborate effectively both in person and virtually, and be accessible to everybody.

However, meeting rooms are often set up incorrectly, making them counterproductive to work in. This can include packing too many people into one space, a faulty tech integration system that makes online calls impossible or even just uncomfortable furniture.

In this guide, we explore key considerations to help organisations set up a well-organised and productive meeting room. We cover the impact of furniture, technology, audio and lighting on meeting room functionality. We also explore sustainable choices for meeting rooms and the financial benefits of utilising the circular economy for meeting room furniture.

What is a meeting room?

A meeting room is an enclosed space where groups meet to discuss operations and make decisions. Meeting room sizes generally vary, seating between four and twelve people around a single table, with built-in screen sharing and video conferencing. In some cases, meeting rooms can house up to fifty people at a time for large conferences.

A meeting room often has multiple purposes, whether it’s a fifteen-minute catch-up meeting, a confidential conversation or a four-hour-long board discussion. Therefore, a meeting room needs to be versatile enough to accommodate a range of needs.

What is the difference between a meeting room, a conference room and a boardroom?

A meeting room, conference room, and boardroom are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes when applied correctly. Below we have summarised the differences between the rooms in a table.

How to choose meeting room furniture

Choosing the right meeting room furniture is vital to ensuring productive and comfortable meetings. For instance, choosing a table that’s too big will make a meeting room feel crammed or not having an AV system suitable for online meetings will make the meeting far less productive.

For offices that might not have the luxury of having multiple meeting rooms, consideration also needs to be made to selecting furniture that fulfils a variety of needs.

In this section, we will explore the different types of furniture items to consider.

Meeting room chairs

Meetings can run from a quick fifteen minutes to three hours or longer; therefore, meeting room chairs need to be comfortable and durable.

The best way to ensure comfort and durability is to include ergonomic meeting room chairs that provide effective support and sufficient seat depth, with height adjustment to suit different builds. Meeting room chairs should also include some form of support for arms, such as upholstered armrests built into the shell of the chair, or more traditional fixed frame armrests.

Using a fixed chair, or a chair that’s not ergonomically adjustable, for a prolonged period can lead to back and neck pain, reduced circulation, and decreased productivity.

To learn more about ergonomic furniture, explore our furniture consultant’s guide to ergonomic furniture.

Meeting room table

The meeting room table is typically the centrepiece of the room and the place where discussions take place. Therefore, consideration needs to be taken regarding the size of the table.

A table that is too large will push people to the periphery and make a meeting room feel cramped, especially if people need to leave quietly but have to squeeze past others, disrupting the meeting. On the other hand, choosing a table that is too small will feel cramped and lead to an overcrowded table, especially when you factor in laptops, cups of coffee, and notepads that people may use during a meeting.

Modern meeting room tables should also make it easy for people to access power for their laptops, with recessed power sockets embedded in the tabletop. Hence, nobody has to reach across or go under the table to plug in.

When looking for a meeting room table, make sure to measure your meeting room and the table size. Adhere to the recommended number of people who can sit around the table at a time, and try to avoid cramming too many people into the meeting.

Another consideration is the base of the meeting table. A rectangular meeting room table with legs at each corner can limit how many chairs you can use effectively in the room. Alternatively, a meeting room table with a central base allows more space for people to sit comfortably around the table.

Storage

If a meeting room is used regularly, it’s worth considering adding a storage solution. Meeting room storage can be used to hide away cables, pens, and documents, ensuring that the room appears tidy rather than cluttered and messy for the next people using it.

Practically, a storage space can be used to lay out hospitality items such as refreshments and lunch options when hosting guests or clients.

Also consider using storage as a decorative element within the room and as a way to reinforce brand identity. Whether that’s continuing similar patterns and furniture styles, displaying awards or including branded colours.

Whiteboard

Physical writing surfaces remain the fastest way to sketch a process or map a decision with a group. Wall-mounted glass boards stay clean longer than melamine and can be photographed when someone wants to share the notes afterwards.

It’s also important to note that whiteboards are no longer the plain and uninspiring boards found at school. Whiteboards can also enhance a room's aesthetic, with timber surrounds, perimeter backlighting, and back-painted colours to help weave in a company’s brand.

How to choose meeting room technology

Meeting room technology has come a long way since the days of chairs, tables and projectors. Factors such as hybrid and remote working, advances in video conferencing technology, and employee expectations have meant that meeting rooms need to integrate technology that accommodates both physical and virtual spaces equally.

At Sketch Studios, our in-house technology team can consult and supply IT and AV packages to match the varying needs of organisations across different industries.

Technology for meeting room video conferencing

To have effective online meetings, a meeting room needs three crucial pieces of technology: a good camera, high-quality microphones, and a well-sized display.

• Camera: The lens should have a wide enough field of view to capture everyone seated at the table. Auto-framing camera models are particularly effective for tracking the person speaking, which is useful in larger meeting rooms.

• Microphones: Microphones are ultimately more crucial than cameras, as poor audio will make a meeting unworkable if nobody can understand each other. Some cameras integrate effective microphones, but it is worth considering table-mounted microphones so that everyone can be heard clearly.

• Displays: The right size television is vital so that everyone can easily see who is talking on the screen or any documents that might be shared. Ensure you find a television that can be comfortably seen from the furthest point in the meeting room.

Meeting room audio

Acoustics is often overlooked in a meeting room, despite being one of the more immediate factors affecting comfort and clarity of communication.

For instance, a room full of people and a room prone to echoes can cause havoc for those on the other end of a video call, sometimes making meetings unintelligible.

How to improve meeting room acoustics?

The most effective starting point for improving acoustics in a meeting room is the ceiling, with absorbent ceiling tiles that can significantly reduce reverberation. In addition, carpets, acoustic wall panels, and fabric-upholstered chairs can absorb unpleasant sounds and be combined to reduce reverberation further.

Removing echoes benefits in-person participants and ensures that remote participants can hear everyone clearly. Removal of echoes and good acoustics help reduce the need for people to repeat what they were saying and the general confusion caused by inadequate audio.

For colleagues with hearing loss, it is worth considering installing a hearing loop, especially for hearing aid users. Although more difficult to retrofit, installing a hearing loop at the design stage can help make the meeting room more accessible for all.

For neurodivergent colleagues who may be more sensitive to acoustic quality, using soft-close door mechanisms and adding castors to chairs can help to reduce sudden impact noises. Our guide on designing a neuroinclusive workplace covers the wider range of sensory considerations.

Meeting rooms used for confidential conversations require sound insulation as a separate consideration from acoustic absorption. Absorption reduces reverberation time inside the room, and insulation limits how much sound passes through the partition into adjacent spaces.

Door construction is the most common performance failure; therefore, an acoustic door set with perimeter seals and a drop seal at the threshold is the best way to prevent sound leakage.

Audio for video conference meeting rooms

A meeting room sound system for video conferencing needs to accommodate both the remote and in-person participants. For in-person participants of a video call, it is important that they can easily hear their online counterparts.

​To ensure peak sound quality, consider installing evenly distributed speakers throughout the room. This avoids any sound drop-off for in-person participants at the far side of the room.

Meeting room lighting

Poor meeting room lighting can cause several issues, including exacerbating digital eye strain, causing headaches and migraines, and leading to postural pain if it causes people to hunch to see a screen better. Meeting rooms can bring this on with too much or too little lighting.

​UK CISBE guidelines require that lux (the unit used to measure the amount of visible light) be 500 - this includes meeting rooms. In perspective, Overcast daylight is roughly between 1,000 - 2,000 lux.

​Most meeting rooms rely on recessed downlights to meet regulatory requirements, but these are not always sufficient lighting. For virtual meetings, poor lighting can cast hard shadows, reduce on-camera image quality, create glossy effects, and cause lots of glare on screens, making it difficult to see or understand.

​A layered lighting scheme can resolve many of these problems. A general ambient circuit, combined with lighting pendants above the table or indirect wall-wash lighting, raises vertical illuminance around faces, improving both the room experience and on-camera image quality.

​Dimmable circuits on separate zones allow occupants to reduce ambient light for presentations, where a lower level reduces screen washout, and raise it again for open discussion.

Sustainability considerations for the meeting room

One area to consider when choosing furniture or technical equipment is whether it is sustainably sourced.

Sustainable choices have a range of benefits, such as reducing embedded carbon and can even lower the overall procurement cost.

Specifying products from manufacturers with verified supply chains and selecting pieces built for longevity reduces the environmental footprint and the cost of future replacement cycles.

Sketch Studios holds B Corp certification and EcoVadis Platinum accreditation, two independently verified standards covering responsible procurement.

Our approach to sustainability, circular design, and circular economy principles is embedded in every furniture project.

Our guide on sustainable choices in workplace furniture covers the range of decisions available at the specification stage.

Secondhand meeting room furniture

Secondhand and pre-owned meeting room furniture applies circular economy principles directly to the office procurement process. Keeping functional pieces in active use reduces demand for new manufacture and diverts usable items from the commercial waste stream.

Choosing pre-owned meeting room chairs and tables reduces procurement spend without necessarily reducing the quality. The commercial furniture market carries substantial pre-owned stock from office relocations, downsizes and refurbishments. Pieces from quality manufacturers retain structural integrity well beyond their first installation, and a furniture consultant can identify appropriate stock, check condition against specification and advise on any refurbishment required before delivery.

Office furniture is a significant contributor to commercial landfill, and pre-owned pieces redirected into active projects reduce that load directly.

The responsible procurement frameworks used by Sketch Studios provide a structured route to sourcing pre-used items at the right quality level.

In fact, we have the in-house expertise and experience to manage the entire second-hand office furniture procurement process without using external consultancies, making us the number one specialists in this field.

Our furniture consultant’s guide to sustainable choices provides additional information and covers the evaluation criteria applied to pre-owned stock before it enters a project.

Summary

Most meeting room projects run into difficulties at the planning stage, before a single item has been ordered. Table dimensions, acoustic treatment and meeting chairs can be the route of many issues later down the line.

Technology and furniture should be specified together, since power routing and screen connections are built into the table. A table ordered before the AV brief is finalised regularly requires modification, adding cost and extending the programme. Ultimately, meeting rooms should be planned before and not considered as an afterthought that requires retrofitting.

Sketch Studios provides furniture procurement services and furniture consultancy for organisations setting up and upgrading meeting room spaces. We work across the full specification process, from initial brief to installation, and advise on sustainable and pre-owned options as part of every project.