Tell it what you are selling — shell scheme stands, US booths, islands, table-tops — how many visitors you expect, and what else the show needs: registration, a café, a seminar theatre, a lounge, step-free access. It works out how big a hall you need, where every square metre goes, and then lays the whole show out to prove it fits. Free, no sign-up.
Real halls have pillars, loading doors, fire exits in awkward places and a power grid under the floor. Metis draws your actual hall, fills it with stands round all of that, numbers and prices them, shows you where visitors will walk — and lets you walk the aisles in 3D before anyone builds a thing.
Start your free trialMost trade show calculators multiply your stand area by a fixed number. That number is the answer to a question you did not ask: it depends on how big your stands are, how wide your aisles are and what else is on the floor. So this page builds the answer up from the parts.
Then comes the part a ratio cannot do. The calculator takes a hall of the size and shape it worked out, puts the extras along the back wall and registration beside the entrance, and fills the rest with stands using the same layout engine as the Metis planner. If they do not all fit — because a seminar theatre ate a row, or the hall's proportions leave a strip too narrow for a back-to-back pair — it grows the hall a little and tries again until they do. The size you see is a size that has been laid out.
The busiest moment drives the space for people: a café is sized for the people on the floor at once, not everyone who comes during the day. The calculator takes your visitors a day, times how long a typical visit lasts, divided by the hours the show is open — that is the average number in the hall — and adds 30% for the late-morning peak every show has.
These are Metis's working figures for a busy public or trade show. They are deliberately on the comfortable side; your venue's licence, fire risk assessment and catering contractor have the final word.
| Area | How it is sized |
|---|---|
| Registration & entrance | One desk per 500 visitors a day (at least two), 12 m² each with a queue lane, plus room for the arrival crush |
| Café & catering | 1.4 m² per café seat, plus a servery of at least 20 m² |
| Networking lounge | 2 m² per person on soft seating |
| Seminar theatre | 0.9 m² per theatre seat, 25 m² of stage and AV, 15% for its aisles |
| Cloakroom | A 6 m² counter plus space for the coats of the busiest moment |
| First aid / quiet room | 12 m² / 15 m² |
| Storage for exhibitors | 5% of the stand area, for stock, literature and packaging |
| Step-free access | No aisle under 2.4 m, a rest seat every 400 m² of show floor, two wheelchair spaces in the theatre |
| Fire exits | 5% of everything else kept clear |
Fifty 3 × 3 m shell scheme stands are 450 m² of stand. In back-to-back rows with 3 m main aisles and a 2 m cross aisle every eight stands, they need roughly 730 m² of show floor with the aisles, before anything else. Add registration, a café, a seminar theatre and an aisle round the walls and most shows of that size need a hall of 1,300–1,800 m². Put your own mix in above for a figure for your show.
For a busy show with good aisles, usually 40–50% of the hall. Above about 55% the aisles are getting narrow; below 35% the show is very generous with features or the stands are small. The calculator gives your own figure under the breakdown.
In the UK, 3 m for main aisles and 2 m for cross aisles is common; in the US, 10 ft throughout. For a step-free show, make no aisle narrower than about 2.4 m so two wheelchairs can pass with people at the stands. Always check with your venue: fire exit routes often have minimum widths set by the licence.
About 0.9 m² per theatre-style seat, plus 25 m² for the stage, screen and AV, plus around 15% for its own aisles — so a 60-seat theatre needs about 90 m², and a 120-seat one about 150 m².
It keeps a share of the floor clear for fire exits and lays the show out with a clear way in, but it treats your hall as a clean rectangle. Real pillars, loading doors and exits in particular places change what fits — that is what the Metis planner is for: draw the real hall and fill it round them. See Metis for exhibitions and trade shows.
