Office Refurbishment Over the Holidays: How to Plan a Furniture Change Without Disrupting Work

At the end of December, offices are usually at their quietest. Part of the team is on leave, there are fewer meetings, and new projects wait until January. That is why the holiday period is often a convenient time for an office refurbishment: you can replace desks, rearrange zones or set up spaces for calls without disrupting everyday work.

But if you want the team to return to a ready office after New Year, decisions need to be made much earlier than it seems. This article gives you a practical plan: when to order what, what can be changed in a few days, and how to prepare so the first working day after the holidays is not spent searching for belongings and reconnecting computers.

The most common mistake is planning from the order date rather than from the date the office needs to be ready. It is easier to count backwards from the first working day after New Year:

• Installation – on the working days between the holidays. In a small office, installation can take up to a week; in a larger one, 1–2 weeks.
• Production and delivery – usually 5–8 weeks for furniture from standard collections, longer for custom-made pieces.
• Approving decisions and placing the order – 1–2 weeks.
• Discussing needs, measuring, space planning and the commercial proposal – 2–5 weeks.

Adding up all the stages, it is worth starting to plan a holiday refurbishment about 3–4 months in advance, and even earlier for a larger or more complex project. Ideally, the order should be confirmed no later than the end of October.

Two more things need to be considered before the holidays. First, demand for installation rises at the end of the year, as more and more companies want to finish refurbishment work before New Year, so fewer installation days remain available. Second, material suppliers also go on holiday, so materials for production have to be ordered earlier than usual. For these reasons, it pays to confirm the order as early as possible and prepare the premises in advance.

If decisions have not yet been made and less than two months remain before the holidays, there will most likely not be enough time for a larger refurbishment. In that case, it makes sense to change over the holidays only what the supplier confirms it can deliver on time, and move the rest of the work to January.

It is also worth clarifying with the supplier when the production lead time starts: from signing the contract, receiving the advance payment or the final approval of drawings and materials. We wrote about all the stages and the budget in more detail in the article Office Fit-Out Cost in 2027: Furniture Prices and Budget Planning.

Installation goes smoothly when the space is ready for it. A few things worth sorting out before the holidays:

• Employees’ belongings. A week before the holidays, ask the team to pack their personal belongings into labelled boxes. It is usually the unlabelled items that go missing.
• Computers and screens. Agree on who will disconnect and reconnect them. It helps to note which equipment belonged to which workstation.
• The building. Agree on freight lift, vehicle access and security hours over the holidays. Building management often works shorter hours at this time.
• Dimensions. Check the dimensions of doors, corridors and lifts, especially if you will be bringing in large desktops or acoustic booths.
• Old furniture. Decide in advance what stays, what moves to another zone and what is removed. Desks and cabinets in good condition can be sold or donated to schools and community organisations, but this takes time.

The last point matters for more than tidiness. A study commissioned by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) found that about 10 million tonnes of furniture are discarded in the EU every year, and most of it is incinerated or ends up in landfill. Some of the furniture that no longer suits your office can serve others for many years.

A refurbishment pays off only when people can get straight to work on the first working day after the holidays. To make that happen:

• on the last day of work, walk around the office: do all desks go up and down, are the screens connected, has the packaging been removed;
• send the team a short message: what has changed, where things are and how to use the new zones;
• in the first few days, show employees how to adjust their desk and chair. It takes a few minutes but makes a big difference to whether the new furniture is used as intended. The ERGOLAIN team can do this too;
• after 2–3 weeks, ask employees what works well and what should be improved.

The holiday period suits an office refurbishment because the space stands almost empty for several days in a row. But the installation itself is quick, while most of the work happens much earlier: space planning, ordering, and arrangements with building management and the team. If time is short, refurbish what matters most over the holidays and plan the rest for a later stage – that way the office changes gradually and work does not stop.

If you are planning to refurbish your office over the holidays or early next year, ERGOLAIN designers will help assess the space, prepare a layout and coordinate the production and installation schedule. You can start with a space planning request.