Average footprint or roof area of commercial buildings
Release date: September 1, 2023
The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) does not directly measure the footprint or roof area of commercial buildings. However, we can estimate the footprint or roof area of a building by using the average, or mean, floorspace per floor. For instance, according to the 2018 CBECS, the mean floorspace per floor for all U.S. commercial buildings was 11,061 square feet.
For one-story buildings or multistory buildings where each floor is the same size, this estimate will be close to the footprint or roof area. However, the estimate will be less accurate for multistory buildings where parts of the building have a different number of floors or where the floors vary in size.
In the table below, we provide the mean number of floors per building and the mean floorspace per floor for all buildings and categories of buildings. We estimate mean floorspace per floor by dividing total square footage by total number of floors.
To ensure confidentiality, the CBECS public use microdata file replaces the specific values for number of floors in taller buildings with two categories: 10 to 14 floors and 15 or more floors. Public use data file users cannot see the specific number of floors for those taller buildings. In this table, we use the specific number of floors to calculate the estimated mean floorspace per floor.