How to Equip a Boutique Pilates Studio: Checklist and Budget

Equipping a studio is mostly arithmetic, and the arithmetic is easier than people expect. What catches first-time owners out is rarely the cost of the reformers — it is the floor space per station, the lead times, and the small items that are individually cheap and collectively not.

Three studio models and what they cost

1. The private practice: one room, one or two clients

Aim: one-to-one and duet teaching in a single room, often at home or in a rented treatment room.

• One Maple 3-in-1 Reformer, Tower & Cadillac — $3,249
• One sitting box — $199
• One spine corrector — $599
• One Pilates ring and ball — $74

Equipment total: about $4,120. Room needed: 3.5 m × 3 m with a 2.3 m ceiling. This is the highest-margin studio model there is, because one machine serves every session you teach.

2. The two-station studio: privates, duets and small classes

Aim: two clients at once, or a class of three with mat work.

• One Maple Reformer with Tower — $2,849
• One Maple Pilates Reformer — $2,449
• One combo chair — $1,099
• One ladder barrel — $899
• Two sitting boxes, one spine corrector, small props — about $1,100

Equipment total: about $8,400. Room needed: 6 m × 4 m. The chair and barrel are what let you run a class of three without buying a third reformer, which is why they earn their place before a second tower does.

3. The group studio: six reformers

Aim: scheduled group reformer classes, six to eight per class.

• Six reformers. At $2,449 each that is $14,694; using aluminum frames at $1,749 it is $10,494.
• Studio bundles from $4,499 include the sitting box, jump board and accessories per station — worth comparing against buying the pieces separately at this volume.
• Six sitting boxes and six sets of props — about $1,600
• One chair and one barrel for privates between classes — about $2,000

Equipment total: $14,000–$19,000. Room needed: about 11 m × 7 m of clear floor. Note that the equipment is usually the smaller half of opening a group studio; rent, flooring, mirrors, sound, insurance and booking software typically exceed it.

Floor space per station: the number that decides your class size

Plan 3.6 m × 1.9 m per reformer station, including working clearance. That is the honest figure, and it is what determines how many machines your lease will hold.

Practical rules:

• Reformers side by side need 60–75 cm between carriages so two clients can step off simultaneously without colliding.
• Leave a 90 cm teaching aisle. You will walk it several hundred times a day.
• Keep the footbar ends away from walls and mirrors.
• Ceiling height of 2.3 m minimum if any station has a tower. Measure at the lowest point of the ceiling, not the highest.

Before signing a lease, draw the stations on the floor plan to scale. A room that looks like it holds eight reformers frequently holds six.

Buy in this order

If cash flow means phasing purchases, this order gets you teaching soonest:

1. Reformers. They generate the revenue. Nothing else does until these are in.
2. Sitting boxes. Cheap, and a large part of the repertoire is unavailable without them. Do not open without one per station.
3. A chair. The best value second apparatus: small footprint, hard workout, and it lets you teach an extra client in a fixed room.
4. A ladder barrel or spine corrector. Mobility and extension work, and what keeps long-term clients progressing.
5. A Cadillac or tower. Buy when you know from your own schedule that you need it, not before.

What first-time studio owners forget

Spare springs and straps. These are the consumables. A snapped strap mid-class with no spare means a cancelled class. Order spares with the machines.

Lead times. Our orders are dispatched within 7–15 business days and ship by freight from our manufacturing partner, so allow 22–40 business days from order to delivery in the US. Work backwards from your opening date and add a fortnight of slack. Full timings are on the Shipping Policy page.

Delivery access. Freight is delivered to the curb or ground floor. A crated reformer is over 2.4 m long and a 3-in-1 weighs 135 kg. Check your doorway widths, staircase turns and whether the loading point is reachable by a lorry — before delivery day, not on it.

Assembly time. Budget a couple of hours per machine with two people. Six reformers is a day's work, not an afternoon.

Flooring. Reformers concentrate load on small feet. Protect a wooden floor with pads, and check your lease before drilling anything for a wall-mounted springboard.

Should you buy bundles?

Our studio bundles ($4,499–$9,999) pair a reformer with the box, jump board and accessories for that station. They are worth it when you are equipping several identical stations and want them genuinely identical — matching equipment matters more in a group class than it sounds, because a client who moves between stations should not have to relearn the machine. For a single-machine private practice, buying the pieces individually usually gives you a better-chosen set.

Talk to us before you order a studio's worth

Send us your floor plan and the class sizes you intend to run, and we will tell you how many stations the room holds and what the full equipment list comes to. We will also flag anything on your list we think you do not need yet. Email help@corereforme.store or call +1 (929) 604-7180, Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm ET.

Related reading: how much space a reformer needs and reformer, tower, Cadillac or 3-in-1.

Prices correct at 25 September 2026 and quoted in USD. Pilates is a form of exercise. CoreReforme makes no medical or therapeutic claims.