What are the standard ceiling heights per floor for office and residential towers these days?

It seems like 50 stories these days have potential to be 1000 footers/305 meter towers.

The real question isn't ceiling heights, it's floor-to-floor heights. Because the amount of space between ceiling and floor-above can vary dramatically.

There's a variation by city depending on height limits, etc.

Offices in Seattle probably average 13' ftf (due to height limits). Biotech labs about 15'. Apartments around 10'.

^^^
how much is that in meters? :?

10ft=3.05m
13ft=3.96m
15ft=4.57m

The real question isn't ceiling heights, it's floor-to-floor heights. Because the amount of space between ceiling and floor-above can vary dramatically.

There's a variation by city depending on height limits, etc.

Offices in Seattle probably average 13' ftf (due to height limits). Biotech labs about 15'. Apartments around 10'.

Your right, I meant floor-to-floor heights, just didn't word it correctly.

Office is still 13 ft? That's what the WTC Towers had back in the 70's when it was standard, but now they say that's too short because of extra wiring, etc.

for residential buildings in hong kong, it's about 3.00m per floor.

In 2003 the minimum ceiling height in The Netherlands was raised from 2,40m (9.87 feet) to 2,60m (8.53 feet), mainly because of the exepcted average growth of people. Sadly minimum requirements are often being explained as maximum dimensions. Some 2,4m ceilings can feel quite low, especially since our average ranks among the heigest in the world.

so the minimum ceiling height went up in metres but down in feet :)

Whoops, 2.4 meter happens to be 7.87 feet. :)

so there are laws for floor-to-floor heights? i never knew that.

yeah, imagine if there werent. youd have developers want to save money by building half floors and have occupiers crawl.

It seems like 50 stories these days have potential to be 1000 footers/305 meter towers.

I think that is still very rare unless the building had a super huge spire or was something like the Kingdom Centre.

yes there are laws in ceiling heights! Here in Australia we have a minimum height limit of 2.4m floor- ceiling for apartment towers but these days its getting up towards 2.7m. The floor to floor heights for apartments used to be min of 2.6m and now are approx 3m. Eureka in Melbourne has a luxurious 3.2m floor to floor or 2.9m celing height.Recently in brisbane a developer reduced each floor of his resi tower by 15cm from 3m to 2.85m per floor, to save costs on construction but still consisting of 38 floors in the tower which was reduced overall by 10m in height.

As for offices, the 60's and 70's were basically 12ft or 3.6m per floor. Now its edging towards 4m due to cabling and air con ect.
So its gettign really easy to estimate heights of resi towers and office towers. just multiply x3m for resi towers or x4m for office towers.
cheers guys

Floor to Floor for class 5 buildings (offices) in australia are AFAIK at least 3600mm, and regulations for minimum 2700mm floor to ceiling. (Well thats to my understanding.)

This question relates to floor to floor standards, are there such for residential as well? For the most part I have been sticking to 12' ceilings, I however like to think in unconventional ways when I'm designing, I tried performing a standard net search, but have thus far found nothing. I'm hoping that joining this forum will prove useful.

Why are there laws regulating the floor-ceiling height ? Why does it have to be 2.7m in some countries, when most people are under 1.80m ? Isn't that a bit of a waste ?

Also, does anyone know what exactly the material between each floor is made out of (residential/office) ? There's a steel armature and concrete, what else ? If I look at 2 posts earlier, one said that in Australia it's 3.6m floor-floor and 2.7m floor-ceiling, so there is a 0.9m layer of something in between ? That's huge !!!

/\ its a matter of psychology, i.e there have been studies carried out with people living in commie blocks which have 2.5m floors, which equates to roughly 2m ceilings and what came out was that people are more depressed (eh.. dunno if its really about the ceiling), but it makes sence ;)

what can be between floors, oh well, lots, plumming for example, or airconditioning duckts etc

Zoning controls building height

Why are there laws regulating the floor-ceiling height ? Why does it have to be 2.7m in some countries, when most people are under 1.80m ? Isn't that a bit of a waste ?

Also, does anyone know what exactly the material between each floor is made out of (residential/office) ? There's a steel armature and concrete, what else ? If I look at 2 posts earlier, one said that in Australia it's 3.6m floor-floor and 2.7m floor-ceiling, so there is a 0.9m layer of something in between ? That's huge !!!

Consider those areas (pathways) where airplanes usually take to land in an airport, if you don't regulate the heights of building the airplane will have a hard time avoiding skyscrapers along that path.

That's why they have zoning of different lots, zoning tell developers how tall the building is allowed, the maximum total floor area the building is allowed and occupancy use of the building.

Materials between fllors:

Basically a floor assembly is composed of the finish flooring (carpet, hardwood, tile, etc.) + concrete + corrugated metal decking (steel building) + beam/girder + fasteners/supports for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, communication systems + hanged ceiling for the floor below.

Sometimes in offices they have raised floor assemblies, this allow for easier manipulation and layout of utility systems specially if floorplans are frequently reconfigured depending on occupancy use. Studies have also shown that air condition and heating blown from the floors are more efficient than blown from the ceiling.

in most cases you can expect the actual floor to floor to want to be greater than whatever the minimum is... b/c i have yet to see an architect that doesn't want a higher ceiling or a mechanical engineer that doesn't want more room for ducts

Thenks for the answers. I just thought that developers would want to put the most floors for a limited height. If the height limit is 100ft because of air traffic, he would love to drop the celing down the lowest possible, so that he can make more floors ?

Also, here's an idea: To save energy on lighting, why not making each floor semi-transparent ? I'm thinking of a white acrylic type of material, it's letting light through, but is also milky white. There would be all the cable and air conditioning ducts etc.. but I think it would make it less 'depressing' than if there is a conventional grey or white ceiling hangin above us, with ugly light fixtures.

Thenks for the answers. I just thought that developers would want to put the most floors for a limited height. If the height limit is 100ft because of air traffic, he would love to drop the celing down the lowest possible, so that he can make more floors ?

Also, here's an idea: To save energy on lighting, why not making each floor semi-transparent ? I'm thinking of a white acrylic type of material, it's letting light through, but is also milky white. There would be all the cable and air conditioning ducts etc.. but I think it would make it less 'depressing' than if there is a conventional grey or white ceiling hangin above us, with ugly light fixtures.

SURE!!! If I can have semi-transparent concrete slabs or can afford to use structural members made of glass throughout the building. Then the construction cost will probably breakeven with the electricity bills in about 2000 years.

and a lack of privacy! not gonna happen. clever though.

Is it holcim or cemex which has the translucent cement, It's already here gentlemmen. Interesting material to work with if it gets to commercial levels.

Developers wil always maximize sales for minimal cost. This said the actual driving force is market acceptance. If you're building low cost housing then a low floor to ceiling height is more acceptable. If you can design it that the ceiling is the slab so much the better. I've seen floor to ceiling heights of 2.2m (minimum legal for many countries), with the ceiling direct to the slab. The mechanicals are off to side (fire sprinklers etc). With a .2 slab that's a 2.4 m floor to floor. It's minimum legal and acceptable to the market. Obviously even if this was legal you would not want to sell that to teh aspirational middle markets which are the tougest to sell too (their the ones who want a 12 foot ceiling but pay 8 foot prices) to the very expensive (30 foot ceilings anyone, but who cares they're willing to pay for it and dont' care too much about the price). Mind you this is more with residentials. Commercial office is driven very much by practical considerations whether it's raised floors or 0 dust environment ducting (very expensive, bulkyand hard to build, these are the guys who need all that .9 space you're talking about), of course there are still differences in grade a commercial versus more common back office type spaces and then we're back again to same market tiering. Goldman Sachs recently completed tower in Jersey City has 42 floors in 781 feet (238m), with an average floor to floor of 18.50 feet. Granted that the median is probably going to be lower, it's still very high and it's fitting for the client as investment bank they need to make statements like this. A back office though will just get a standard minimum 2.4 (8ft) ceiling.

In Mexico right now, if you want to have your building with an A rating you have to leave Floor to Floor height of 16 ft (4.88 mts). Most new first class office buildings should look to that height because it can accomodate any ind of tenant. If we were talking strictly office (no retail, lab, medical, etc.) you can get away with it at 13 ft.