Nobody puts coat storage on a fit-out drawing. It turns up on the punch list, after the desks are in, when someone notices that the reception chairs have become a cloakroom and there are three jackets over the back of the same task chair. In an office where everybody had their own desk it never needed a decision, because everybody had their own chair back and their own drawer. In a hot-desking office nobody owns a desk, so nobody owns a hook.
This is a small problem that makes a floor look badly run, and it is one of the few workplace problems you can solve for a few hundred dollars. What follows is how we specify it, what the options actually cost a project, and which two stands we hold in Sydney.
The decision you are actually making
It is not "which coat rack looks nice". It is where on the floor plan coats live, and whether that decision survives the next reconfiguration.
Three things follow from that. The first is distance: a coat goes where a person walks, and if the cloakroom is past the lifts and around a corner, the coat goes on a chair instead. The second is peak load: coat storage is sized by the wettest Tuesday in July, not by the headcount on the lease. The third is permanence, and it is the one that costs real money — a built cloakroom is joinery, and joinery is the part of a fit-out that gets demolished.
What happens when nobody specifies it
You can read an unspecified floor from the door. Coats go over the backs of task chairs, which means the chair cannot be pushed under the desk at the end of the day and the next person to sit in it has to move somebody else's jacket. They go over the arms of soft seating in reception, which is the one part of the floor a visitor sees first. They go over the top of a monitor, over a pod door handle, and on the floor beside a bag.
None of that is a disaster. All of it is visible, and all of it is the kind of thing a facilities manager gets asked about by the people who signed the lease.
The four places a coat can go
There are only four real answers, and they separate cleanly on one question: does it need fixing to the building?
| Option | Needs fixing or trades | Survives a reconfiguration | What it also does | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built cloakroom or joinery recess | Yes — carpentry, and usually a services coordination | No. It is demolished with the fit-out | Hides everything; can take bags and umbrellas | A long lease with a fixed reception |
| Locker bank | Usually fixed, and needs a footprint | Partly — it can be moved, with effort | Locks. Holds bags, laptops, helmets | Floors where people also need to store gear |
| Wall-mounted rail or hooks | Yes — fixing into the wall | No. It leaves holes and a patch | Cheapest per garment | Back-of-house, plant rooms, kitchens |
| Freestanding coat stand | No | Yes. It is furniture, not building | Moves to where the people moved | Reception, breakout, desk neighbourhoods |
A locker bank is worth saying something honest about. Lockers are the right answer when the thing you are storing is a bag, a laptop, a helmet or a change of clothes, and they are the wrong answer when the thing you are storing is a wet coat, because a locked steel box is the one place a wet coat should not go. Most floors that hot-desk seriously end up with lockers and stands, doing two different jobs.
Why the six-year number decides this
The strongest argument for freestanding furniture over joinery is not aesthetic and it is not even really about coats. It is about how often Australian offices are pulled apart.
The Better Buildings Partnership, reporting a 2016 Edge Environment feasibility study part-funded by a City of Sydney grant, found that Sydney offices are refurbished on average every six years, that around 60,000 tonnes of strip-out waste is generated each year in the City of Sydney area, and that 80 per cent of the materials removed from Sydney offices was sent to landfill. The partnership's own target for strip-outs and refurbishments is 60 to 80 per cent resource recovery.
Read that against the table above. A joinery cloakroom built into a reception wall has, on that average, about six years before it becomes strip-out material. A freestanding stand has as long as the finish lasts, and when the floor plan changes it gets carried to the new entry point by one person. It is the same argument we make about what happens to office furniture at the end of its life: the cheapest thing a fit-out can do is specify items that leave the building intact.
How many, and where to put them
We are not going to give you a coats-per-person ratio, because the honest ones do not exist and the invented ones get specified anyway. Here is the framework we use instead.
- Count the winter peak for each neighbourhood, not the floor. A 60-desk floor arranged as three neighbourhoods of 20 has three coat problems, not one, and solving it centrally solves none of them.
- Count coats, not people. In Sydney the number of people wearing a coat on a given morning is a fraction of the number in the building, and that fraction is what you are storing.
- Put it on the path. Between the lift lobby and the desks, in sight, not behind a door. A stand people pass is a stand people use.
- Keep reception separate. Visitors should not be hanging a coat on the staff stand, and staff should not be walking into reception to get theirs.
- Leave the umbrella out of it. A wet umbrella belongs in a tray by the door, not on a coat hook above a carpet tile.
If you are working from a floor plan and want a second opinion on placement, send it to us. We do that as part of commercial fit-out work and it takes ten minutes.
What we hold in Sydney
Two stands, at opposite ends of the range, and they are genuinely for different jobs.
Offecct Hanger — the front-of-house one
Designed by Neri&Hu, the Shanghai studio, for Offecct. Offecct describes it as a frame and hooks in black texture lacquer, a foot in black concrete, and black leather straps as the hanging points. It stands 1800 mm high, 400 mm wide and 265 mm deep, and it is freestanding — no wall fixing, no trades, no patching when it moves.
The reason to spend $1,320.00 on a coat stand is that in a reception or a client-facing breakout space it is a piece of furniture rather than a utility, and a concrete foot means it stays where it is put when somebody pulls a heavy coat off it. It suits you if the stand will be seen by people who do not work there.
Profim Nine — the floor-plate workhorse
Designed by Tomek Rygalik of Studio Rygalik for Profim. A single metal column on three legs, which is what gives it its footprint and its stability, with hooks that Profim profiles at a right angle so that a coat hung on one does not slide off it.
At $453.00 this is the one you buy several of. It is the right answer for desk neighbourhoods, breakout corners and the second and third entry points on a floor — the places where you want the coat problem solved rather than styled. It suits you if you are specifying more than one.
Both come through us because Chair Dinkum is the exclusive Australian distributor for the Flokk group, which Offecct and Profim both belong to. There is more on each brand on our Offecct Australia and Profim Australia pages, and both stands are in the coat racks and stands collection.
Head to head
| Offecct Hanger | Profim Nine | |
|---|---|---|
| Designer | Neri&Hu | Tomek Rygalik, Studio Rygalik |
| Structure | Tubular frame on a concrete foot | Metal column on three legs |
| Hanging points | Black leather straps | Hooks profiled at a right angle |
| Height | 1800 mm | Ring us and we will measure ours |
| Width & depth | 400 mm & 265 mm | Ring us and we will measure ours |
| Fixing required | None — freestanding | None — freestanding |
| Price | $1,320.00 | $453.00 |
| Specify it for | Reception and client-facing space | Desk neighbourhoods, at volume |
Profim does not publish a dimension sheet for the Nine that we can point you at, and we will not print a figure we cannot source. If a ceiling height, a doorway or a tight reveal decides the purchase, ring us and we will measure the one on our showroom floor and give you the number as our measurement, clearly labelled as ours rather than a manufacturer specification. That is the same undertaking we give on our warranty page for the Humanscale seating dimensions Humanscale does not publish.
What it costs in Australia
Prices below include GST and were checked live on 25 September 2026.
| Product | Price | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Profim Nine Coat Hanger | $453.00 | Limited — ring first |
| Offecct Hanger Coat Stand | $1,320.00 | Limited — ring first |
Both are held here in Sydney in small numbers, with the rest of the Offecct and Profim ranges available to order. For a floor that needs five or ten, tell us the number and the timeframe before you order one at a time — that is a quote, not a checkout.
How it fits the rest of the floor
Coat storage is the last item in a sequence, and the items before it are the ones that decide whether a shared desk actually gets shared. A desk is only clear at the end of the day if the chair goes under it, which is why armrest height and the gap between the armrests matter more on a hot desk than anywhere else, and if the screen is on an arm rather than a stand. Our monitor arm procurement guide covers the screen half of that, and choosing chairs for a small team covers the seating half for floors under about twenty people.
If people are hot-desking because they are in the office two or three days a week, the other thing that usually needs solving at the same time is somewhere to take a call. That is a different conversation and it is on our commercial fit-outs page.
Recommendation
For most Australian floors: one Offecct Hanger where visitors see it, and a Profim Nine at each desk neighbourhood and secondary entry. That is typically a few hundred dollars per neighbourhood, it needs no trades, no fixing and no building approval, and it moves when the floor plan moves — which, on the Better Buildings Partnership's numbers, it will.
If you are specifying a whole floor, or you already have a locker bank and want to know whether you still need stands, ring us on 02 9640 0642 or come and look at both in our Pyrmont showroom. Bring the floor plan.
Frequently asked questions
Where should coats go in a hot-desking office?
Somewhere people walk past on the way in, not somewhere they have to detour to. The practical answer for most floors is a freestanding stand at each entry point and each desk neighbourhood, rather than one central cloakroom that nobody uses because it is forty metres from where they sit.
Do I need one coat stand per person?
No, and specifying on that basis will waste money. Coat storage is a peak-demand problem, not a headcount problem: the load is set by how many people are in the building on a cold, wet morning, and by how many of them are wearing a coat rather than carrying one. Count the winter peak for each neighbourhood, not the total number of staff on the lease.
Is a coat stand better than a locker bank?
They solve different problems. A locker holds a bag, a laptop and a helmet, and it locks; a coat stand holds a wet coat where air can get to it and costs a fraction as much. Offices that hot-desk properly usually end up with both, because a locker bank sized for coats is an expensive way to store coats.
Can you hang a coat on the back of an office chair?
It works for one coat and stops working at scale. The coat ends up between the sitter and the backrest, it slides off as soon as the chair reclines, and the chair will no longer tuck under the desk, which is the whole point of a shared desk being clear at the end of the day.
How tall is the Offecct Hanger coat stand?
1800 mm high, 400 mm wide and 265 mm deep, on a black concrete foot. It is freestanding, so it needs no wall fixing and no trades on site to install it.
What does a commercial coat stand cost in Australia?
In our range the Profim Nine is $453.00 and the Offecct Hanger is $1,320.00, both including GST, checked on 25 September 2026. For a floor needing several, ring us on 02 9640 0642 with the number and we will price the group rather than the piece.
Are Offecct and Profim the same company?
They are separate design houses, both part of the Norwegian Flokk group. Chair Dinkum is the exclusive Australian distributor for Flokk, so both ranges come through us here, and a warranty claim is assessed in Sydney rather than routed offshore.
What warranty comes with an Offecct or Profim coat stand?
Ring us on 02 9640 0642 before you order and we will confirm the current term for your model in writing. We would rather check than quote you a number we cannot stand behind. Whatever the term, your rights under the Australian Consumer Law apply in addition to it and are not limited by it.
References
- Offecct, Hanger product page, offecct.com
- Offecct Price List, Denmark, Vol. 1.2, 1 April 2024 (Flokk)
- Profim, Nine collection page, profim.eu
- Flokk, Warranties and product quality, flokk.com
- Better Buildings Partnership, reporting a 2016 Edge Environment feasibility study part-funded by a City of Sydney grant
- Chair Dinkum warranty terms by brand
- Prices and availability checked live on the Chair Dinkum store, 25 September 2026
