Restaurant Floor Plans and Café Layouts, With 3D Examples

Start the restaurant layout with what can't move

Before placing any tables, mark the parts of the room that stay put: the entrance and host stand, the kitchen and its pass, the bar or coffee counter, the toilets and the exits. Tables can be moved later and these can't, so every table has to be easy to reach from them.

• The entrance and host stand. Put the host stand beside the door, clear of its swing, so guests are met before they walk into the room.
• The kitchen pass. Plates leave the kitchen here, and staff walk from the pass to the tables more than any other route. Keep the walk to the furthest table short, and keep it apart from the queue at the door.
• The bar or counter. It is worked from behind, so its back goes against a wall or a back bar, with guests on the open side.
• Toilets and exits. Guests walk to these during service, so leave a clear route to them that doesn't cut through a section of tables.

Table layout: fixed seating on the walls, loose tables in the middle

In most dining rooms that run well, booths, banquettes and window tables line the walls: they need something behind them, and they are the seats guests ask for. Stools go at the bar. The open floor in the middle holds loose tables, the part of the room you can rearrange.

Square tables do most of the work in the middle: two tables for two push together into a table for four, and a row of them seats a group of eight. A round table suits a group and softens a room of squares, but it can't join another table, so use only a few.

• Keep the list of pieces short. Five or six kinds of table and seat look designed and are easier to run than twenty.
• Match table sizes to your bookings. A couple at a table for four leaves two seats empty for the whole sitting; tables for two that combine avoid that.
• Put tables that combine side by side on the plan, so pushing them together never means carrying one across the room.

How much space to leave between tables

No Australian rule sets the gap between restaurant tables, so it comes down to comfort and service. Designers work from reference figures like these:

• A main service aisle, where staff carry plates: 76 to 91 cm.
• A squeeze past occupied chairs: about 46 cm.
• Tables in a banquette row: at least 31 to 36 cm apart, and 61 cm is better.
• Chairs along a table: 61 to 76 cm apart.

The law does set rules for access. The National Construction Code classes a café or restaurant as a Class 6 building, and for Class 6 buildings "access must be provided to and within all areas normally used by the occupants." The accessways that provide it, with their turning and passing spaces, follow Australian Standard AS 1428.1. Plan the accessible route from the door to the tables and the accessible toilet first, fit the furniture around it, and have your certifier or an access consultant confirm the widths.

How many seats fit in a restaurant or café

For fire exits and toilets, the National Construction Code needs a count of the people a room holds. Its Table D2D18 allows 1 m² per person for a restaurant, a café or a dining room, 1 m² in a bar where people sit and 0.5 m² where they stand. The code sizes exits from that count, and clause F4D3 uses it to set the number of toilets "if it cannot be more accurately determined by other means", such as the seats you actually have. A council's development consent can also set a maximum number of patrons, so check yours before you add seats.

That 1 m² is an assumption for the safety sums, not a layout target. Once the tables, chairs, aisles and bar are in, a comfortable room needs more floor per seat. The three rooms pictured here work out like this:

Café floor plan: start at the counter

A café turns tables fast and much of its trade never sits down, so a café layout starts at the counter. Put the order point where a queue can form without blocking the door or the tables, and keep pickup separate, so people waiting for their coffee aren't standing in the queue.

For seating, use pieces that take the least floor: a narrow counter along the window, stools at the coffee counter, and a banquette along a wall with small round tables in front of it. One high table in the middle suits people on their own and small groups. Outdoor seating adds more, subject to any permit your council requires.

Bar floor plan: island or wall bar, and standing room

Plan a bar around its counter. An island bar in the middle can be worked from every side and doesn't block a view, which is why rooftops use them; a bar against a wall leaves more open floor. Keep high tables close to the bar, where people stand and move about, and put low, soft seating further away, where groups settle in for the night.

The National Construction Code counts standing room separately. A standing bar area "is an area used by the standing patrons and extends not less than 1.5 m wide from the outside edge of the bar top for the length of the serving area of the bar," and it is counted at 0.5 m² a person.

Put the floor plan in your booking system

A floor plan on paper helps you fit out the room. In your booking system, the same plan decides who sits where. When every table carries the smallest and largest party it takes, each booking lands on a table that fits and tables that push together can take a bigger group. The host sees the whole room: who is seated, who is running late and which tables free up next.

In Gaplessly you draw the plan once in the floor plan editor, with rooms, walls, doors, bars and tables, across more than one floor if the venue has them. The Floor screen then shows it live during service, in 2D or 3D, with each server's section marked on its tables. The pictures in this post come from that editor and the Floor screen, using the Hong Kong and Little Bean demo venues, which anyone can open without an account.

Where these rules come from

The National Construction Code 2025, Volume One: clause D2D18 and Table D2D18 on the number of people a room holds, clause F4D3 on toilets, clauses D4D2 and D4D4 on access for people with a disability, and clause A6G7 on Class 6 buildings, all read on 30 September 2026. Each state and territory adopts a new edition of the code on its own timetable, and some vary its clauses, New South Wales among them, so check the edition that applies to your fit-out. The spacing figures are from Dimensions.com's restaurant seating and dining room clearance references, read the same day. This is general information, not building or legal advice.