Small Office Cabin: Six Compact Sizes from 8×6 to 20×12 ft

Small office cabin or office cabin design? Read this first

Most searches for "small office cabin" in India mean one of two different things. The first is a private cabin inside an existing office: a glass-and-board partition that an interior contractor builds around a manager's desk. The second is a small office cabin as a building: a factory-made steel room that arrives on a trailer, is set on supports and is ready to use the same day. This page is about the second thing only.

If you want the first, an interior designer or a partition contractor is the right call, and nothing on this page will help you. If you want a room where there is no building, or a room that must move when the job moves, keep reading. Everything below assumes a standalone unit: its own floor, its own roof, its own door, its own switchboard.

The word "cabin" also covers container offices and security cabins on this site. A container office is built from or like an ISO container and belongs on the Container Offices pages. A security cabin is a guard post sized for standing and watching rather than sitting and working, and belongs on the Security Cabins pages. The small office cabin sits between them: an office first, compact second.

Who buys a small office cabin and where it goes

The buyers we build these for share one brief: one room, one to three regular users, and a job that does not need anything larger. The gate clerk at a factory entrance who logs vehicles and issues passes. The site supervisor who needs a desk, a drawing on the wall and a door that locks. The dispatch assistant at a contractor yard who receives drivers at the counter. The parking-checkpoint operator. The clinic that needs a side room for a nurse and a visitor.

The sites are as compact as the users: a factory gate where the cabin must sit beside the boom barrier and not in the truck lane; a parking checkpoint with a two-metre strip of ground; a small contractor yard where the office shares space with material stacks; a school or hospital compound that needs an enquiry room at the entrance for a year.

What these buyers do not need is a nine-size ladder, a partitioned floor plan or a toilet in the same module. They need the price of one room, the drawing of its openings and a delivery date. That is the whole content of this page.

How to choose the size: 48, 80, 100, 160, 200 or 240 sq ft

Start from the number of people who sit inside on a normal day, not the number who might visit. One person sits in an 8×6. Two or three people, with a visitor chair, work in a 10×8 or 10×10. Three people side by side on narrow ground fit a 20×8. A compact team of four or five, or a dispatch counter with a back office, takes the 20×10 or 20×12.

Then check the ground. The 8 ft wide sizes carry a one-way roof and pass through narrower gates and along boundary strips; the 10 and 12 ft wide sizes carry a two-way roof and need a wider approach and a wider pad. If the plot has length but no depth, the 20×8 beats the 10×10 even at the same seat count. If the plot is square, the 10×10 uses it better than any 20 ft cabin.

The table below is every size on this page with the facts that decide between them. The prices are ex-GST for the office shell; GST-inclusive figures are shown on the size selector above.

Two things the table cannot show. First, the 20×12 is not a bigger 20×10 in every direction; it is the 20×10 with a single two-foot strip added across the width, which becomes a walkway behind the desk row. Second, the 10×8 and 10×10 stage the same four desks, but only the 10×10 gives the two back-wall desks enough separation for two people to work facing away from each other for a full shift.

How the price is built, and what is quoted separately

Every size on this page is priced from one visible number: ₹1,224 per sq ft at 200 sq ft, the rate of the 20×10 reference size. Smaller cabins carry a premium per square foot because a door, a switchboard and four lifting eyes cost the same whether the room is 48 or 200 sq ft; larger cabins carry a reduction. The 8×6 works out at ₹1,762.56 per sq ft and the 20×12 at ₹1,175.04. The bands are fixed, so a quotation for any of these six sizes reproduces the published figure rather than a fresh estimate.

The published price buys the compact office shell, and it is worth being exact about what that means before you compare it with anything else:

• Included: the finished steel cabin in one of the six sizes, its locked roof family and GA opening schedule, the door, the windows in the schedule, the standard electrical package and the four corner lifting eyes.
• Quoted separately: a toilet or any additional internal partition; premium internal lining; loose furniture, including the desks and chairs shown in the images; a fitted air-conditioning unit; delivery, unloading, placement and site supports.
• Confirmed at quotation: the external colour, the electrical load schedule, the warranty period and exclusions, and any coating upgrade for coastal or chemical exposure.

The desks in the gallery and the GA boards are staging. They show where a desk fits and which wall the switchboard clears, not what is in the box. Buyers who want the cabin delivered furnished ask for the furniture line at quotation and receive it as a separate line.

Roof, walls and lifting: how the compact family is built

The small office cabin is a non-container sloped-roof cabin, and the roof is the quickest way to tell it apart from a container office. Cabins 6 and 8 ft wide carry a one-way roof: one plane falling across the width with a total rise of five to six inches from the high eave to the low one. Cabins 10 and 12 ft wide carry a two-way roof: one continuous centred ridge along the full length, with two planes falling to the long-wall eaves, again only five to six inches above each eave. At normal eye height the roof reads as almost level; it still drains. There is no hip, no four-way roof, no gable apex hook and no ISO corner casting on this family.

The shell follows SAMAN's approved cabin-family material key. The base is a welded mild-steel channel chassis; the upper, wall and roof framing is mild-steel hollow section and angle with reinforced openings. External walls are vertical corrugated mild-steel sheet with coordinated door and window trims; the roof is sloped corrugated sheet with sealed laps and flashings. Inside, the walls and ceiling are prelaminated board with aluminium joint sections over glass-wool insulation, and the floor is cement-fibre board with a resilient vinyl finish. Exposed steel is prepared, primed and enamelled. Member sizes and the standard thicknesses are listed in the Specifications tab.

Lifting is by four compact eye plates, one at each top corner of the plan, and nowhere else. That is what makes the single-lift placement work: a crane or a hydraulic tail-lift picks the cabin as one rigid box, sets it on the prepared supports and leaves. Hook plate dimensions, hole size and lifting capacity are governed by the approved shop drawings for the order; this page makes no capacity claim.

Doors, windows and sockets follow one wall schedule

Each of the six sizes has a GA drawing that names its four walls, Wall A, Wall B, End C and End D, and fixes what each wall carries. Compact sizes put the single external door on Wall A and one centred window on each of the other walls that has one; the 8×6 keeps Walls B and D solid. The 20 ft sizes put window–door–window on Wall A and two windows on Wall B, with one centred window on each end. The exterior photographs and the interior photographs on this page were produced from the same schedule, so a window you see from outside is the window you see from inside, on the same wall, in the same position.

This matters for more than pictures. Switch and socket routing is set to clear the door swing, the window frames and the staged desk zone, so the desk under the window does not sit on top of the only socket, and the switchboard is not behind the open door. When a buyer asks for a different opening, the change goes onto the drawing before production, and the electrical routing moves with it. Nothing is cut on site.

Site preparation, delivery and placement

The cabin needs a level pad and support points as shown on the final drawing for the order; the perimeter base frame carries the module between those points. The buyer provides a single-phase supply to the cabin's distribution board and, where a 20 ft size is ordered with air-conditioning provision, the circuit capacity the electrical drawing calls for.

Standard delivery from confirmed order is 7 to 21 working days plus transit, with freight for the 20 ft trailer and 40 ft trailer bands published on the Shipping tab. Delivery within Bangalore city and across the listed Delhi NCR areas is free; elsewhere the band applies. Unloading, placement and site supports are quoted separately, and the approach road, gate width and crane or tail-lift access decide the method. Send a photograph of the intended position with the enquiry and the placement is quoted with the cabin.

When a small office cabin is the wrong choice

It is the wrong choice when the room must contain a toilet: that is a different module with a wet zone, sold as the Porta Cabin with Toilet. It is the wrong choice above 240 sq ft or beyond five desks; those sizes are on the main Portable Office Cabin page and on the Readymade Office Cabin page with its fixed specification. It is the wrong choice for an order of three or more identical units across sites, where the Prefabricated Office Cabins page carries tier pricing. And it is the wrong choice for a guard post where someone stands and watches rather than sits and works; the Security Cabins range is sized and glazed for that.

Frequently asked questions

What is the minimum size of an office cabin?

The smallest office cabin SAMAN builds as a standalone unit is 8×6×8.5 ft, 48 sq ft, with one door, one window and one staged desk. Below that a unit becomes a guard booth rather than an office; see the Security Cabins range for those.

Can three people work in a 10×10 small office cabin?

Yes for a normal shift. The GA stages four desks, two on the back wall and one under each end window, so three people have a desk each and the fourth position is a paperwork or visitor point. For three people side by side on narrow ground, the 20×8 is the better plan.

Is the price ex-GST, and does it include delivery?

Prices on this page are ex-GST for the office shell, with the 18% GST-inclusive figure shown beside each size. Delivery is free within Bangalore city and the listed Delhi NCR areas; elsewhere the trailer freight band on the Shipping tab applies. Unloading, placement and site supports are quoted separately.

Is the AC included?

No. The standard electrical package includes provision for an AC circuit where the drawing calls for it; the fitted unit is quoted separately, as are the desks and chairs shown in the images.

Can a toilet be added to a small office cabin?

Not inside these six sizes. A cabin with a toilet needs a wet zone, waste connection and a different lining, and is a different product: the Porta Cabin with Toilet. A separate portable toilet unit beside the office cabin is the usual answer on a compact site.

Why does the roof look almost flat?

Because the slope is deliberately small: a five-to-six-inch fall on the one-way roof, or a five-to-six-inch centred ridge on the two-way roof. That is enough to drain and low enough to keep the cabin under gate heights and transport limits. It is not a flat container roof and has no ISO corner castings.

How is the cabin lifted and placed?

By four corner lifting eyes, one at each top corner, as one rigid box. A crane or a hydraulic tail-lift places it on the prepared supports. The lifting details and capacity for the order are governed by the approved shop drawings.

How should a small office room be arranged?

The GA boards on this page are the arrangement: desk against the wall opposite the door in the 8×6, desks under the windows in the 10 ft sizes, a desk row along Wall B in the 20 ft sizes, and sockets routed clear of the door swing and window frames. Start from the board for your size and tell us what to move.