Orpheus report 2026
How offices are really used.
Real data from the buildings Orpheus measures: how many people come in each day, how meeting rooms are used, what the air is like in meetings and what each person who comes in costs. No client names.
By Carles Morales, founder of Orpheus ·
- 45%
- of desks taken at the daily peak, on average from Monday to Friday.
- 14%
- on Friday, against 64% on Tuesday: almost five times fewer people.
- 18%
- of booked meetings stay empty: nobody walks in.
- 2 in 3
- rooms for 8 or more never pass half their seats, even at the busiest moment.
- 1 in 10
- meeting hours with CO₂ above 1,000 ppm.
Orpheus office park, September 2026. How each figure is measured, at the end.
Occupancy
The floor plan says 100%. The building, 45%.
Open-space desks taken at the busiest moment of each day. Not even Tuesday, the best day, gets past two thirds. Monday doesn’t fill up either, and on Friday almost five times fewer people come in than on Tuesday (79% fewer), with the same cleaning, the same heating and cooling and the same services.
- Monday34%
- Tuesday64%
- Wednesday46%
- Thursday56%
- Friday14%
Average, Monday to Friday: 45%
Meeting rooms
Big rooms for small meetings.
- 40%
- of the time the average room is in use, from 8 am to 7 pm. More than half the day, empty.
- 2 in 3
- rooms for 8 or more don’t reach half their seats, even at the daily peak: in an 8-person room, never more than 4.
- 23%
- of rooms go unused for a whole normal day. On Friday, 68%.
And when someone is there, it’s often just one person: on Roche’s campus, 30% of the time rooms are in use. Read the story.
Ghost meetings
18%
of booked meetings, nobody walks in.
At one client with sensors, over two months: 180 hours of blocked, empty room for every 1,000 booked. The screen says “busy”, nobody else can book it and it’s heated or cooled for nobody. If the calendar frees the room when nobody is there, it’s like having 18% more room time, without building anything. How they free themselves.
Comfort
Out of every ten meeting hours:
- 1 h
- with CO₂ above 1,000 ppm, the INSST criterion.
- 1 h 30 min
- with the temperature outside the room’s comfort range.
- 30 min
- with humidity outside 30 to 70%.
The safety temperature limit Orpheus applies (19 to 27 °C) is hardly ever reached: what fails is comfort. Which values to meet, under the RITE and the INSST.
What it costs
Count people, not desks, and the number soars.
A typical building of 2,400 m² and 240 desks, with rent, cleaning and energy at €28/m² a month.
- €280
- per desk a month: what the floor plan says.
- €630
- per person who comes in, on average: more than double.
- €2,030
- per person who comes in on a Friday: seven times the plan.
Meeting rooms are the same: a 20 m² room costs €560 a month, €2.55 per available hour. At average use (40%), each hour of use costs €6.4; in a room used 10% of the time, €25. Work it out for your building.
What to do with this data
From the calendar to real use.
With occupancy and comfort measured, the building stops running on a timetable and starts running on use. Three decisions:
- 01
Energy
When a floor drops below the occupancy you choose (say, 5%), the BMS dims the lights and relaxes the set point. When people come back, it goes back to normal.
- 02
Cleaning
If one room in four isn’t used all day, and two in three on Friday, the cleaning round can go only where people have been.
- 03
Floor space
In the typical building, opening only the floors needed each day (Monday 2, Tuesday 3, Wednesday 3, Thursday 3, Friday 1 of 4) puts 8 in 20 floor-days to sleep: up to €5,760 a month in energy and cleaning. And on Tuesday, the busiest day, everyone fits on three floors: giving one back cuts the cost per person from €630 to €470.
An exercise with the typical building and average ratios, not a promise: each building’s own data decides.
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How does your building compare?
Two or three weeks of measuring give you this profile with your own data. Leave your name and email and we’ll tell you how.
How it was measured
- Occupancy
- Each day’s peak divided by open-space capacity. September 2026, 20 working days, 8 am to 7 pm. It’s the average of the peaks, not of the whole day, which would be lower still.
- Meeting rooms
- More than 200 rooms. A room is in use when at least one person is inside, not when it’s booked.
- Ghost meetings
- Bookings of 30 to 180 minutes in rooms with a sensor, at one client over two months: 180 empty hours out of 1,000 booked.
- Comfort
- Meeting rooms, only the time with people inside. CO₂ against the INSST’s 1,000 ppm criterion, temperature against each room’s range and humidity between 30 and 70%.
- Costs
- A typical building of 4 floors with 60 desks each (2,400 m²) at €28/m² a month: 22 rent, 3 cleaning and 3 energy. Park averages; if you own it, rent is the opportunity cost.
Real data from Orpheus clients with hybrid working, anonymised. Your building’s will be different: that’s why it gets measured.
How to cite this report
Orpheus (2026). «How offices are really used». Orpheus office park, September 2026. https://www.orph.eus/en/office-use-report/
You may use the figures if you cite the source. For more detail, write to info@orph.eus.
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Measure your building, not the average.
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