A rough starting point for how many passenger lifts a building of a given size might need. Useful at the stage where you are sketching a scheme and want a sensible number to work with.
Indicative only. This is a planning guide built on broad rules of thumb. It is not a traffic study, and it should not be used to settle a design, support a development application or resolve a dispute.
Real sizing depends on what the building is used for, who is in it and when, how demand is spread floor by floor, and how the lifts themselves behave. Two buildings with the same population can need a different number of lifts. That work is a separate exercise.
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Indicative range
2 to 3
passenger lifts
What this guide does not do
A number on its own is not a design. This guide deliberately stops well short of the work we do for clients, and there are things it cannot tell you:
- How long anyone will actually wait, at any time of day.
- How demand is distributed floor by floor, or what happens at the peak.
- What car size, speed, door arrangement or control system the building needs.
- How the lifts should be grouped, zoned or served across a tall building.
- Anything about goods lifts, service lifts or fire-fighting lifts — this counts passenger lifts only.
Those answers come from a traffic study, which models the building properly rather than dividing one number by another. If the lift count matters to your scheme, that is the exercise to commission.
Get the sizing done properly
Send us your details and we will get in touch. We act only for owners, developers and managers — we do not sell, install or maintain lifts, and we take no commission from anyone who does.