36 Types of Offices

An office is a space for commercial, professional, administrative and knowledge work. These range from massive business parks, campuses, complexes and buildings down to a small space at the end of a freelancer's kitchen table. Offices can be designed for productivity, concentration, communication and creativity. These range greatly in commercial terms, design philosophy, aesthetics and function. The following are common types of office.

Assigned Workspace	Business Park / Office Park
Call Centers	Cellular Office
Class A	Community Workspaces
Conventional Office / Traditional Office	Coworking Space
Creative Office	Cubicle Office
Dense Office	Factory Office / Warehouse Office
Flagship	Flex Space
Garden Office	Headquarters
Home Office	Hot Desking
Hybrid Office	Mobile Office
Modern Office	Open Plan
Pods	Postmodern Office
Private Office	Reception Desks
Satellite Office	Serviced Office
Shared Space	Study Booth
Team Office / Enterprise Suite	Temporary Office
Training Room / Conference Room	Transit Workspaces
Virtual Office	Work Lounge

Assigned Workspace

The practice of giving employees a personal desk. Creates stability and a sense of ownership and belonging.

Business Park / Office Park

Large facilities that may include multiple buildings. Typically located in suburban locations.

Call Centers

Offices for handling remote customer service interactions. These are often large facilities with spartan desks at high density.

Cellular Office

An office composed of rooms that often have reconfigurable internal walls.

Class A

Offices are commonly classified with a category such as "Class A" representing those offices with prime features such as landmark architecture, high quality construction and premium services.

Community Workspaces

The practice of working in coffee shops and other community locations.

Conventional Office / Traditional Office

A traditional office is owned or leased by a business with assigned workspaces and common areas and services such as a reception desk, meeting rooms, lunch rooms, coffee rooms, printer rooms and mail rooms.

Coworking Space

Membership-based offices where freelancers, remote workers and independent professions work in a shared communal setting.

Creative Office

A vague but common term for offices that challenge traditional office layouts. Often open-concept with novelty features.

Cubicle Office

An office that provides a semi-private space for each employee with temporary dividers. Currently unfashionable and often criticized as industrial-age design. However, cubicles are pragmatic as they give all employees a permanent space to focus and cultivate their own personal workspace.

Dense Office

An office that serves many employees relative to its space. For example, in Japan it is common for offices to be organized around long common tables with small work areas that may be assigned.

Factory Office / Warehouse Office

An office inside a factory or warehouse. Useful for keeping employees in touch with operations.

Flagship

An office or commercial location that is intended to represent an organization or brand. For example, a bank that owns a landmark building that represents its financial prowess and stability.

Flex Space

A broad term for space that is either multipurpose or reconfigurable. These are often large rooms with movable furniture and few fixtures such that things can be moved around to support different projects, tasks, meetings and events.

Garden Office

A small home office that is separated from the home.

Headquarters

A large office that houses the management of a large to mid-sized firm.

Home Office

An office or workspace in a home. Small business owners, freelancers and independent professionals may specifically purchase, rent and renovate homes with a home office space.

Hot Desking

The practice of using all or most desks as a shared resource that can be booked or otherwise used on a temporary basis. Logical as a means of reducing office space but can have big culture impacts such as reducing any sense of team or belonging.

Hybrid Office

The practice of combining multiple design philosophies into a single office. For example, an office that has private offices, assigned cubicles and hot-desk work areas.

Mobile Office

An office that can be moved such as a construction office that is moved from site to site.

Modern Office

The use of modern interior design philosophies such as form follows function and minimalism in the design of an office. With its repetition, lack of decoration and spartan features modern offices lack character but may encourage diligence and discourage creativity.

Open Plan

An office with large rooms with few dividers or private areas.

Pods

Pods are an attempt to create privacy in an open space with boxes or organic-shaped enclosures that resemble small depressing or idiosyncratic rooms.

Postmodern Office

The use of postmodern design that embraces decoration and complexity over the harsh minimalism of modern design. These are all unique and range from inspiring and useful to bizarre and impractical.

Private Office

A room for an employee. This includes home offices that are a separate room.

Reception Desks

An office service and space that receives stakeholders such as customers, employees, partners or investors.

Satellite Office

The practice of distributing the offices of a large or mid-sized firm to multiple geographical locations. Satellite offices typically help to reduce the commute of employees and can provide some variety to working life.

Serviced Office

An office that isn't rented but is rather provided as a service by a partner. Services can include basic things like security and premium things such as beverage and food services. Many large firms view these things as corporate functions that are important to culture such that they in-house management of offices.

Shared Space

An office used by two or more firms.

Study Booth

A small room that seats one or two people. Used for work productivity in an environment that has a lot of consultants or an open-concept.

Team Office / Enterprise Suite

An enterprise suite is a membership-based workspace for a team as opposed to an individual. May include full services and can often be used on a flexible basis such as for an event, meeting, workshop, group task or project.

Temporary Office

An office that is used on a temporary basis. For example, a firm that puts its contractors into an old storage room with plastic lawn furniture and calls it a temporary office.

Training Room / Conference Room

A single room that can be rented at a facility such as a conference center or hotel.

Transit Workspaces

Spaces for working on the road such as an office pod or conference room in a hotel.

Virtual Office

A virtual space for communicating in some productive way.

Work Lounge

An office space that resembles the lounge of a hotel with comfortable seating and premium features and services.