Public building construction costs: restaurants, hotels, schools, retail, ratios and specifics

A building open to the public is any building or space to which people other than those who work there are admitted. The definition covers an immense spectrum: from the corner shop to the international airport, from the doctor's surgery to the teaching hospital.

The French fire and panic safety regulations classify establishments by type according to their activity, restaurants, shops, hotels, schools and so on, and by category according to their occupancy, from the first category for the largest to the fifth for the smallest. That dual classification determines which requirements apply.

This regulatory framework is the principal source of the premium over housing. An apartment building and a restaurant of the same floor area do not face the same requirements on smoke control, accessibility, ventilation or structural fire resistance. Those technical differences translate directly into euros.

The rule of categories

Establishments in the first and second categories, above 300 people, are the most demanding: sprinklers mandatory, active smoke control throughout, reinforced compartmentation, a category A fire safety system.

Fifth-category establishments, below the occupancy thresholds, face lighter requirements but remain subject to accessibility, often the most visible premium for small shops and restaurants.

The table gives cost bands excluding VAT by sub-type, with the dominant items and the recommended contingency. The ratios exclude land, fees and external works, in values for a provincial location.

Note: hotels are expressed as a cost per room, the sector's reference unit. To convert to a cost per square metre, divide by the average area per room, 30 to 50 m² according to the standard. Apply the regional factor for your area.

The cost difference between a public building and housing of the same area is not a matter of more luxurious finishes; it comes from requirements that impose works with no residential equivalent. The table details the principal premiums and their order of magnitude.

The premiums accumulate according to type. A commercial restaurant combines accessibility, specific ventilation, reinforced fire safety and a professional kitchen, which is why its ratio often exceeds 3,060 €/m² even for an architecturally simple programme. A sports hall adds to these the long-span structure with clear spans of 25 to 40 metres.

The professional kitchen: the item that always surprises

In a commercial restaurant the professional kitchen can represent 35 to 50 % of the total budget, according to the level of equipment and the culinary concept. It is not an item to reason per square metre but per piece of equipment: the cooking range, positive and negative cold rooms, the wash-up, the extraction canopy and its ventilation, the high-pressure gas supply.

A restaurateur who pre-budgets by applying a housing ratio makes an error of several hundred thousand euros. The construction economist is the only party able to price this item precisely before the production drawings.

For restaurants and shops the structure is often simple, a concrete or steel box with a commercial frontage. What costs money is what goes inside: the kitchen, the ventilation, the specific electrical installation with an installed capacity often three to five times that of a home, the refrigeration. On the refurbishment of an existing unit the shell is often acceptable and the budget concentrates entirely on the technical fit-out, which is why refurbished retail fit-out runs at 820 to 2,550 €/m².

The hotel is the only type where the cost per room is more relevant than the cost per square metre, because the room is the unit of production and of revenue. An 80-room three-star at 150,000 € a room costs 12,000,000 €, but its floor area can vary from 3,500 to 5,000 m² according to the architectural concept. The cost per square metre therefore varies from 2,400 to 3,400 € for the same cost per room.

The items that concentrate the value are the common areas, lobby, restaurant, bar, which often represent 25 to 35 % of the budget for only 15 to 20 % of the area, and the technical facilities such as spa, pool and kitchen, whose effect on the cost per room is spectacular: adding an indoor pool to a four-star can take the cost per room from 180,000 to 250,000 €.

Schools, sports halls and sports facilities are mostly public commissions, subject to the procurement code. That affects the construction cost in two ways: the technical requirements are stricter, full universal accessibility, durability of materials, ease of maintenance, and the procedural timescales lengthen the period of inflation risk.

For local authorities the economist is often the first port of call for confirming the budget feasibility of a public facility before it enters a multi-year investment programme. A realistic outline estimate, incorporating the regulatory premiums specific to the category, is the foundation of a responsible public investment decision.

The great majority of sports halls, schools and cultural facilities are procured publicly. Restaurants, hotels and shops are private. Their funding and their construction procedures are radically different.

Buildings open to the public justify higher contingencies than housing, for several reasons. The technical complexity of the specific packages, professional kitchen, ventilation, sports equipment, is hard to price precisely at outline stage without detailed drawings. The interfaces between packages are numerous, and the regulatory requirements can change between concept and construction, as accessibility, acoustic and fire regulations are updated.

The recommended contingency is 10 to 15 % for ordinary cases, and 12 to 18 % for complex ones such as hospitals, medical buildings and those with bespoke equipment. That is not pessimism, it is the statistical reflection of what these operations reveal systematically during detailed design.

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Buildings open to the public form the most heterogeneous family in construction, with ratios running from 1,220 €/m² for a simple shop to more than 612,000 € a room for a luxury hotel. What they share is a structural premium over housing generated by regulation: universal accessibility at 5 to 12 %, reinforced fire safety at 4 to 10 %, specific ventilation, regulated acoustics. The professional kitchen is the most under-estimated item in restaurant budgets and can represent 40 to 50 % of the total. Hotels are reasoned per room; public facilities carry a premium of 5 to 12 % tied to procurement requirements. In every case the recommended contingency is 10 to 15 %, reflecting the technical and regulatory complexity of these programmes.

Reference basis of the figures

These bands are orders of magnitude for framing, and their reference market is the Paris region. They serve to place a budget at the earliest stages and to compare building types with one another. They replace neither a tender exercise nor an estimate prepared on drawings, and they are not a record of prices actually charged.

The ratios per square metre and per item on this page are stated in January 2026 values. They were updated from January 2025 values, the basis adopted for the whole cocoon, using the BT01 all-trades index published monthly by INSEE on its 2010 base: 132.0 in January 2025, 134.7 in January 2026, a rise of about 2 %.

The global amounts quoted as examples, and any rents, charges or receipts expressed per year or per night, remain on their own basis: a building cost index does not apply to them.

To bring the ratios forward, apply the usual revision formula: updated value = page value × (BT01 for the month in question / 134.7). The index has kept rising since: it stood at 138,3 in June 2026, the last value published when this page was checked, that is 2,7 % above the reference base. BT01 measures contractors' input costs, wages and social charges, materials, plant and energy, not the prices actually tendered.