Electrical is typically 10 to 15 percent of an office buildout budget, and it's the trade where vague planning creates the most painful change orders. I'm Sam from City Power Electrical Services (ECRA/ESA #7015314), and we've wired offices across the GTA from four-person startups to full floors. Here's how the 2026 numbers actually work.
The headline range: office electrical in the GTA runs $8 to $15 per square foot for a typical buildout. A 3,000 square foot office lands between $25,000 and $45,000. The low end assumes simple open-plan lighting, standard receptacle density, and a space with healthy base-building electrical. The high end reflects private offices (more walls, more devices per square foot), boardrooms with AV power, kitchens, server rooms, and lighting design beyond basic troffers.
Where the money goes, roughly: lighting is the biggest slice — fixtures and installation typically 35 to 45 percent of the electrical budget. LED troffers or linear fixtures at proper office light levels (around 500 lux at desks), occupancy sensors (required by code in most new work), and dimming control. Receptacles and power distribution run 25 to 35 percent: code-spaced wall receptacles, floor boxes or power poles for open-plan desks, dedicated circuits for the kitchen, copier room, and any equipment with a motor or heating element. The rest covers the panel work, data cabling if bundled, life safety, and the permits and inspections.
The line items people underestimate. Server/IT rooms: even a modest rack needs dedicated circuits, and proper buildouts add a sub-panel — budget $3,000 to $8,000 for a small server room done right. Boardrooms: displays, video conferencing, and motorized shades add $1,500 to $4,000 per room. Kitchens: dishwasher, fridge, microwave, and coffee equipment each want dedicated circuits — $2,500 to $5,000 for a typical office kitchen. Emergency and exit lighting: code-required, inspected, and roughly $250 to $450 per device installed.
What drives quotes apart more than anything: the base building. A space with a generous, modern electrical room and spare panel capacity is cheap to build out. A space where the landlord's panel is full, the transformer is maxed, or the existing wiring is a previous tenant's spaghetti can add five figures before you've installed a single new fixture. This is a leasing decision, not just an electrical one — we do pre-lease electrical assessments precisely so tenants know what they're signing up for, and they've saved clients from genuinely bad deals.
How to keep your project on budget: lock the layout before rough-in (moving walls after wiring is the classic change-order generator), choose lighting fixtures early (fixture lead times drive schedules), bundle data cabling with electrical under one contract, and make sure your quote explicitly includes ESA permits, inspections, and as-built panel labelling. Our office quotes itemize all of it — lighting, power, data, life safety — so you can value-engineer line by line instead of guessing.
Timeline-wise: rough-in for a mid-size office takes one to two weeks, finishing another week after drywall and paint, and we coordinate ESA inspections so occupancy isn't held up. Building out in an occupied building usually means some after-hours work for tie-ins — priced upfront, not discovered later.
Planning a move or renovation? Send us your floor plan at 416-837-4038 or through our contact page, and we'll give you a real per-square-foot budget for your specific space — including a frank read on the base building before you sign the lease.