Guide · the room
How to lay out a restaurant floor plan: measure the room, then the walkways, then the tables
A dining room is laid out in three passes: the room as it really is, the routes people need through it, and only then the tables. Done in that order, the plan tells you how many covers the room can honestly seat. Done the other way round, it tells you how many chairs you own.
Published · A practical guide. Escape routes and fire safety belong to your fire risk assessment, not to this page.
Measure the room before you place a single table
Start with a tape measure and an empty room, or as empty as a working restaurant gets on a Monday morning. Walk the walls and write down length, width and every corner that is not square. Then the things that cannot move: the bar, pillars, radiators, windows that open inwards, the kitchen door and which way it swings, the entrance, the stairs, the toilets and every fire exit.
Draw that first and nothing else. A plan that starts with tables describes a room you wish you had; a plan that starts with the walls describes the one you have. Work at a true scale, so that what does not fit on the drawing does not fit on the floor either and nobody has to convert anything in their head.
In Slotina you draw each room at its real size — one unit on the plan is one centimetre, and a room can run from three to sixty metres each way — and place the fixed things in it: the bar with its stools, pillars, windows, planters, wall lamps. The plan is drawn from your measurements, not from a photo or an uploaded sketch.
Let the walkways decide where the tables go
Before the tables, mark the routes that have to stay open on the busiest night of the year. There are usually four: entrance to host stand, pass to dining room, dining room to toilets, and every seat to a fire exit. Draw them as bands, not lines, because a route is the width of a person carrying three plates, not the width of an arrow.
The gap between tables is best measured rather than looked up. Sit at a laid table, push your chair back as a guest does when they stand up, and have someone walk behind you with a full tray. The distance at which they get past without touching your chair is the gap for that row. Do it again where two chairs meet back to back, because that is where a room that looked generous on paper gets tight at nine o'clock.
Fire safety is not a matter of taste. Whoever controls the premises is the responsible person under the Fire Safety Order and has to carry out a fire risk assessment and keep it up to date, so a new layout is a reason to look at that assessment again; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules. This guide deliberately gives no escape-route width: that belongs to your assessment and your fire safety adviser.
Slotina keeps a 60 cm margin free along the walls of every room, and checks the layout when you save it: a table overlapping another, standing in the bar or a pillar, or poking out of the room is refused with the reason, so a plan that cannot exist never reaches the host stand.
Choose the tables from the parties you actually get
Count before you buy. For two weeks, write down the size of every party that sits down, booked and walk-in. Most restaurants find that twos outnumber everything else, and a room full of four-tops with two people at each is a full room with half its chairs empty.
Small tables that push together are more flexible than large ones that cannot be split: two two-tops make a four, three make a six, and on a quiet night they go back to being twos. Round tables are sociable and hard to join; squares and rectangles line up into a long table; booths and banquettes use the wall well and suit couples. Each table in Slotina has a shape — round, square, rectangular or booth — and its number of seats.
Then find the seats nobody wants: by the kitchen door, in the draught from the entrance, under the speaker, squeezed into the walkway. They are sold last and swapped most. Often the room works better without one of them, with the space given back to the walkway and the service a few seconds quicker at every other table.
One plan for each room
A restaurant is often several rooms that behave differently: the main room, a back room that takes a private party on Fridays, a bar where people stand, tables outside in summer. Draw each one as its own plan. Then the terrace can be closed on a wet evening without touching the main room, and the back room can be booked whole without the host working out which tables are "the back room" tonight.
Tables outside on the pavement are a plan of their own and need their own permission in England. The national guidance asks for a clear route past them that is normally 2000mm wide, and treats 1500mm as the minimum acceptable between two obstacles. Our pavement licence guide walks through the application.
Slotina gives one venue as many rooms or areas as it has — dining room, terrace, bar — each with its own plan.
Decide the combinations before the night
- 1
Name the joins that work
Tables 4 and 5 make a six; 4, 5 and 6 make a nine. Agree them with whoever runs the floor, and write them down, so the bookings for a six land on tables that can really be joined.
- 2
Check the walkway with the tables joined
A long table that blocks the route to the toilets is not a combination, it is a problem. Walk the route with the tables pushed together before you offer it.
- 3
Leave the host room to improvise
In Slotina the booking engine offers only the combinations you named, but on the night the host can still put any free tables together by hand for one party, with a warning if they seat fewer than the party.
Test the plan with a full service
A floor plan is finished when it has survived a full Saturday, not when it looks tidy. After the first busy service, ask three people what went wrong: the host (which tables were hard to give away), the busiest waiter (where they got stuck), and a runner from the pass (where the plates waited). Move one thing at a time, and run another service before you move the next.
Keep the plan and the room in step. If a table moves on the floor and not on the plan, the host stand starts telling a story about a different room, and the first person to notice is a guest who was promised the window.
What the plan in Slotina does for the rest of the evening
- Each booking is placed on a table in a room drawn at its true size, so the host works from the room itself rather than a list.
- The plan refuses a layout that could not physically exist, and keeps a 60 cm margin at the walls.
- Each room or area — dining room, terrace, bar — has its own plan.
- Named combinations are what online and phone bookings are offered; the host can still join free tables by hand on the night.
Restaurant floor plans: short answers
How much space should there be between restaurant tables?
Measure it rather than copy a figure: push a chair back as a guest would and have someone pass behind with a full tray. The gap that lets them through without touching the chair is your minimum for that row, and back-to-back chairs need checking separately.
Should I draw the tables or the walkways first?
The walkways. Mark the routes from the entrance, the pass, the toilets and the fire exits as bands first; the tables go in the space that is left.
Round or square tables for a small restaurant?
Squares and rectangles if you need flexibility, because they join into larger tables and split back into twos. Rounds suit rooms where the party sizes are steady.
Do outside tables need their own plan?
Yes. Treat the terrace or pavement as a separate area with its own tables, so it can be closed on a wet night without touching the main room. In England, tables on the pavement also need a pavement licence from the council.
Sources (checked 4 November 2026; practical guidance, not fire-safety advice)
A floor plan drawn at the size of the actual room · Table combinations you agreed in advance · Pricing