Open Plan Office Acoustics: Furniture, Décor and Design

Open plan offices bring people together, but they also bring noise. Hard floors, glass walls, and high ceilings look modern, but they let sound bounce around the room instead of settling down. If you want to fix office acoustics, you need to look at furniture, décor, and layout together, not just add a few partitioning panels and hope for the best.

 

You might already have background chatter, ringing phones, and clattering keyboards competing for your attention every day. This kind of office noise doesn’t just annoy you. It wears down your focus and makes it harder to get things done. Understanding how sound moves through your space is the first step towards a quieter, more productive office.

This article walks you through practical ways to shape your acoustic environment, from choosing softer materials to placing furniture with sound in mind. You’ll see how small, low-cost changes can sit alongside bigger investments, so you can build a plan that suits your budget and your team’s needs.

Key Takeaways

• Open plan offices often have poor acoustics because hard surfaces and open layouts let sound travel and bounce freely.
• Careful use of layout, furniture, décor, and absorptive materials can reduce noise and protect privacy for calls and focused work.
• Small, quick changes and longer-term investments can work together to create a quieter, more productive workspace.

How Sound Behaves in Shared Workspaces

Sound in an open plan office does not stay in one place. It travels, bounces, and builds up, which is why you need to understand how it moves before you can control it.

Speech as the Main Source of Distraction

Speech is usually the biggest cause of distraction in a shared office. Your brain finds it hard to ignore words, even when you are trying to focus on something else.

This is different from other office sounds like printers or air conditioning. Those noises tend to fade into the background, but conversations pull your attention away.

Speech intelligibility is a key factor here. If you can clearly hear and understand what someone nearby is saying, it becomes much harder to concentrate on your own work.

The goal is not always to remove speech completely. Instead, you want to reduce how clearly it can be heard from a few desks away, so it blends into general background noise rather than standing out.

Sound Reflection, Absorption and Reverberation

When someone speaks or a sound is made, sound waves travel outward and hit surfaces like walls, ceilings, floors, and desks. What happens next depends on what those surfaces are made of.

Hard, flat surfaces cause sound reflection. The sound bounces back into the room instead of being stopped, which adds to the overall noise levels.

Soft or textured materials work differently. They absorb some of the sound energy, which is known as sound absorption, reducing how much sound reflects back into the space.

This affects something called reverberation time. This is how long it takes for a sound to fade after it has been made.

Key point: a longer reverberation time means sound reflections linger, making a room feel noisier and harder to work in, even if the original sound was not that loud.

Why Background Noise Can Help or Harm

Not all noise is bad. A certain level of ambient noise can actually help you focus, because it covers up sudden or distracting sounds like a phone ringing or a door closing.

This is why some offices use sound masking systems. They add a steady, low-level background noise to smooth out sharp changes in sound.

However, background noise can also work against you. If it is too loud or includes speech, it stops being helpful and starts adding to workplace noise instead.

The difference often comes down to volume and type of sound, not just whether noise is present. Steady, non-speech sounds tend to help. Sudden or spoken sounds tend to hurt your ability to concentrate.

Start With Layout and Acoustic Zoning

Before you buy a single acoustic panel, you need to look at how your office is laid out. Good office acoustic design starts with acoustic zoning: grouping activities by noise level and placing them in the right spots, so sound problems are less likely to happen in the first place.

Separating Collaborative and Focus-Based Activities

Collaborative areas and focus-based work do not mix well when they sit side by side. If your sales team sits next to staff who need quiet to concentrate, no amount of acoustic treatment will fully solve the problem.

Look at how each team works before you decide where to place desks. Teams that talk often, take calls, or hold quick meetings should sit together in one zone.

Teams that need silence for deep work should sit in a separate zone, ideally with some distance or a physical barrier between the two groups. This is one of the simplest and most effective acoustic strategies you can use, and it costs nothing beyond planning time.

Locating Breakout Areas and Noisy Facilities

Breakout spaces, kitchens, printers, and other noisy facilities should sit away from desks used for focused work. These areas naturally attract chatter, footsteps, and equipment noise, so their location matters as much as their design.

Place breakout areas near entrances, meeting rooms, or other social zones where noise is already expected. This keeps sound contained to one part of the office rather than spreading across the floor.

Common noisy facilities to plan around:

• Kitchens and coffee points
• Printers and photocopiers
• Breakout areas and informal seating
• Meeting rooms with glass walls

In a hybrid office, these areas often see uneven use throughout the week, so plan for flexibility rather than fixed daily patterns.

Creating Quiet Zones and Focus Zones

Quiet zones and focus zones give staff a place to work without interruption. These areas should sit as far as possible from breakout spaces, kitchens, and busy walkways.

Use layout alone to reduce noise transfer where you can, such as placing storage units, bookshelves, or tall furniture between focus zones and louder parts of the office. Corridors and circulation routes also work well as buffers.

In commercial office design, focus zones are often placed along quieter perimeter walls or in corners away from main foot traffic. This approach supports concentration without relying on costly acoustic treatment as the first line of defence.

Use Furniture and Décor to Reduce Reflections

Sound bounces off hard surfaces and builds up in a room, so the objects you choose for your office play a direct role in acoustic comfort. Soft furnishings, rugs, and furniture with acoustic properties absorb sound rather than reflect it, while glass partitions and hard finishes need separate attention if you want to control noise properly.

Choosing Soft Furnishings and Upholstered Seating

Fabric absorbs sound. Hard plastic and metal do not. This is why upholstered chairs, sofas and fabric-panelled furniture make a noticeable difference to how a room sounds.

You should look for seating with thick, dense fabric rather than thin or synthetic covers, as denser material absorbs more sound energy. Curtains and soft window treatments help too, particularly in rooms with large glass areas that would otherwise reflect sound straight back into the space.

Cushions, throws and fabric room dividers all add small amounts of absorption. None of these on their own will fix a noisy office, but together they reduce the overall level of sound reflection across a floor.

Using Rugs and Acoustic Furniture

Hard flooring reflects sound and creates noise from footsteps and moving chairs. Rugs sit on top of this problem directly, absorbing sound at floor level where noise from movement is generated.

You get the most benefit from rugs with a thick pile placed in high-traffic areas, such as walkways and spaces near meeting points. This cuts down impact noise before it has a chance to bounce off the ceiling and walls.

Acoustic furniture goes further than standard soft furnishings. Desk screens, high-back chairs and acoustic pods are built with absorbent cores designed specifically to block and soak up sound. Consider these in areas where people need to concentrate or take calls, as they combine sound absorption with physical separation between desks.

Managing Glass Partitions and Hard Finishes

Glass partitions are common in modern offices because they let in light and keep spaces open. The trade-off is that glass reflects sound almost completely, which adds to reverberation in a room.

You cannot make glass absorb sound, but you can reduce its impact. Pair glass partitions with soft furnishings, rugs or fabric panels nearby to offset the reflection. Acoustic treatments such as fabric-wrapped panels fixed to adjacent walls also help balance out hard, reflective surfaces.

The same approach applies to other hard finishes, including polished concrete, metal cladding and exposed brick. Wherever these surfaces are unavoidable, place absorbent furniture or acoustic treatment close by to stop sound from building up in the room.

Select Effective Absorptive Treatments

Absorptive treatments work by soaking up sound energy before it bounces around your office and builds into background noise. Three areas matter most: walls, ceilings, and desk-level dividers.

Acoustic Wall Panels for Lateral Reflections

Sound doesn’t just travel from a person’s mouth to your ear. It also bounces off hard walls and comes back at you from the side. These sideways bounces, called lateral reflections, add to the noise you hear at your desk.

Acoustic wall panels reduce this problem. Fabric-wrapped panels or acoustic wood panels absorb sound rather than letting it bounce back into the room.

Place panels at ear height on walls facing desks, especially in corridors and along glass partitions. For the best acoustic performance, aim for Class A absorption panels where possible.

You don’t need to cover every wall. Focus on surfaces that face seating areas directly, as this is where lateral reflections cause the most disruption.

Ceiling Absorption and Suspended Baffles

Ceilings cover a large area of your office, which makes them one of the most useful places to add absorption. A hard, flat ceiling reflects sound straight back down onto workers below.

Ceiling baffles are a practical fix. These are vertical or angled panels hung from the ceiling that absorb sound from multiple directions at once.

They work well in offices with high ceilings or exposed services, where standard acoustic tiles aren’t an option. Baffles also allow air and light to pass through, so they don’t block ventilation or lighting systems.

For open plan spaces, aim to bring reverberation time (RT60) below 0.6 seconds. Combining ceiling absorption with wall panels usually gets you closer to this target than using either treatment alone.

Acoustic Screens and Low Dividers at Desks

Acoustic screens and low dividers work at the source, right where conversations and typing noise start. Placed between desks, they block direct sound paths and stop noise from spreading across the whole floor.

Unlike full-height partitions, low dividers keep sightlines open. This means you keep a sense of space and natural light while still cutting down on noise.

Choose screens with a solid absorptive core rather than just a fabric layer, as this improves how much sound they actually remove rather than simply blocking it. Desk-mounted screens around 1.2 to 1.4 metres high are usually enough to reduce noise between neighbouring workstations.

These acoustic solutions work best when combined with wall and ceiling treatments, rather than as a stand-alone fix.

Protect Privacy for Calls and Sensitive Work

Open offices often struggle with speech privacy. Without the right design choices, confidential conversations can be overheard, which raises information security risks and leaves staff feeling exposed.

Reducing the Reach of Intelligible Speech

Speech does not stop the moment it leaves someone’s mouth. It travels through the air and bounces off hard surfaces, which means it can be heard several desks away.

This is known as the spatial decay of speech. The further sound travels before it fades, the more likely it is that private conversations become public ones.

You can slow this decay by adding soft materials that absorb sound rather than reflect it. Carpet tiles, upholstered furniture, and fabric wall panels all help.

Bookshelves, planters, and screens placed between desks also break up the direct path of sound. This reduces speech intelligibility for anyone sitting nearby, even if it does not remove the sound completely.

Providing Acoustic Pods and Focus Rooms

Acoustic pods and focus rooms give staff a dedicated space to take calls or work without being overheard. These enclosed units are built with sound-absorbing panels and sealed doors, which stop speech from carrying into the wider office.

You should place pods and focus rooms away from high-traffic areas. This limits background noise from entering the space while someone is on a call.

For meetings that involve several people, standard meeting rooms may not offer enough privacy unless they have solid walls and doors rated for sound reduction. Glass partitions can look modern, but they often need acoustic treatment to properly block speech.

Consider offering a mix of single-person pods and larger focus rooms, so staff can choose the right space based on their task.

Supporting Confidential Conversations and Information Security

Some conversations need more than basic privacy. Discussions about trade secrets, legal matters, or HR issues require spaces built with information security in mind.

You should place these rooms away from open areas and give them solid, well-sealed walls. Doors should close fully and have a sound reduction rating suited to the sensitivity of the information discussed.

Sound masking systems can also help. These add a steady background noise that makes it harder for anyone outside the room to make out specific words.

Staff need to trust that sensitive discussions will stay private. Without this, a lack of privacy can discourage honest conversations and put confidential information at risk.

Apply Sound Masking Where Appropriate

Sound masking adds a low, steady background sound that covers up speech and other noise in your office. It works best when it is set at the right level and balanced with other noise sources, so it does not become a distraction itself.

When a Sound Masking System Is Suitable

Sound masking is most useful when your office has low background noise levels. This happens a lot in spaces with soft floors, ceiling tiles, and few hard surfaces.

Without enough ambient noise, speech carries further and becomes easy to hear from several desks away. A sound masking system fills this gap with a steady, unnoticeable sound.

You should think about sound masking if:

• Your office has an open layout with few walls or partitions
• Staff often complain about overhearing conversations
• The space feels unusually quiet, even during busy hours
• You need better speech privacy in shared work areas

Sound masking will not fix poor layout or lack of furniture on its own. It works best alongside good acoustic design, not as a stand-alone fix.

Balancing Masking With HVAC and Background Sound

Your existing background noise, such as air conditioning or ventilation, already adds some sound to the room. You need to check this level before adding a masking system.

If you set the masking sound too close to your HVAC noise, the two can clash and create an odd or uneven acoustic environment. If you set it too low, it will not do its job.

Most offices aim for a background noise level between 40 and 48 decibels, depending on the type of work done there. A professional can measure your current noise levels and tune the masking system to sit just above them.

This creates one smooth, steady sound rather than two competing ones.

Avoiding Excessive or Uneven Masking

Too much sound masking can feel intrusive and make people feel like they need to raise their voices to talk. This defeats the purpose of the system.

Uneven masking can be just as much of a problem. If some areas are louder than others, staff will notice the shift and find it distracting.

To avoid this:

• Use multiple speakers spread evenly across the ceiling or floor, rather than a few loud ones
• Test noise levels in different parts of the office, not just near the main desks
• Adjust volume by zone, since open areas often need slightly more masking than quiet corners or meeting rooms

Regular checks help keep the sound masking system working as intended, without becoming noticeable or uncomfortable for staff.

Measure Performance and Set Design Targets

Before you choose furniture or decor, you need real numbers on how sound behaves in your office. Measuring reverberation time, background noise, and speech privacy gives you a baseline, so you can set clear targets and check that any changes actually work.

Assessing Reverberation and Background Noise

Reverberation time tells you how long sound lingers in a room after the source stops. In open plan offices, a shorter reverberation time usually helps, but it should not drop too low, or distant voices become too clear and more distracting.

BS 8233:2014 gives you recommended noise level ranges for different office activities. Use it alongside your own measurements to check whether your space falls within acceptable limits.

Background noise also matters. If it is too quiet, nearby conversations stand out and pull focus. If it is too loud, people struggle to concentrate or feel stressed.

A basic acoustic measurement should cover:

• Reverberation time (RT) in seconds, measured across key frequency bands
• Background noise level, recorded when the office is unoccupied and during normal activity
• Room dimensions and surface materials, since these affect how sound travels

Using ISO 3382-3 Speech Privacy Metrics

ISO 3382-3 (also published as BS EN ISO 3382-3) sets out the specific parameters you need to judge speech privacy in open plan layouts. Two key figures come from this standard: D2,S, the spatial decay rate of speech sound level, and the distraction distance, often written as rD.

The distraction distance shows how far someone can sit from a conversation before it stops being clearly understandable. A shorter distraction distance is better, since it means fewer people are close enough to be distracted by any one conversation.

You may also come across the privacy distance, sometimes labelled rP, which marks the point where speech becomes barely audible. Together, these metrics give you a practical way to compare different layouts, screen heights, or ceiling treatments before you commit to changes.

Working With Acoustic Consultants and Relevant Standards

Acoustic consultants bring specialist tools and training that most in-house teams do not have. They can carry out accurate on-site measurements, model different design options, and check your results against ISO 3382-3 and BS 8233:2014.

Working with a consultant early in the design process helps you avoid costly mistakes. It is far cheaper to adjust a plan on paper than to rework a finished office.

Ask your consultant to confirm which acoustic standard applies to your building type and use, since requirements can vary. They should also provide a clear report with measured figures, target figures, and specific recommendations you can act on, such as ceiling absorption levels, screen placement, or furniture layout changes.

Plan Improvements From Quick Wins to Long-Term Investment

You do not need to fix every acoustic problem at once. Start with the noise sources causing the most complaints, make changes that work within your lease terms, then check the results once people are back at their desks.

Prioritising the Most Disruptive Noise Sources

Not all office noise causes the same level of distraction. Start by working out which sounds actually stop people from working.

Ask your team directly. Noise complaints usually point to the same two or three sources: a printer near desks, a busy phone corner, or a meeting room with thin walls.

Rank these by how often they occur and how many people they affect. A loud coffee machine that runs for ten seconds matters less than a call centre desk cluster running all day.

Fix the biggest source first. This might mean:

• Moving equipment away from focus areas
• Adding a screen near a busy walkway
• Installing a wall panel behind a noisy meeting space

Small, targeted acoustic solutions often reduce noise distraction more than spreading a small budget thinly across the whole floor.

Retrofitting Occupied and Rented Offices

Most offices cannot be gutted and rebuilt. If you rent your space or cannot move people out during works, you need acoustic strategies that fit around daily operations.

Freestanding screens and desk dividers need no fixings and can go up during evenings or weekends. Ceiling baffles that clip onto an existing grid avoid drilling into a landlord’s structure. Fabric-wrapped wall panels can often be fixed with adhesive strips rather than screws, which matters if your lease requires the building returned to its original state.

Work zone by zone rather than treating the whole floor in one go. This keeps disruption low and lets you check results before spending more.

Sound masking systems are also worth checking early, since ceiling-mounted emitters can sometimes use existing cabling routes, which cuts installation time in an occupied building.

Reviewing Results After Occupancy

Treat your first round of changes as a starting point, not the final answer. Workplace acoustics behave differently once a room is full of people, furniture and daily activity compared to when it is empty during planning.

Give the space a few weeks to settle, then check in with your team. Ask specific questions: Can people hear calls from other desks? Has noise distraction gone down? Are noise complaints still coming from the same area?

Compare this feedback against measurements if you took a baseline reading before work started. A drop from a loud, echoing room to a calmer one usually shows up in both what people report and what a sound level reading confirms.

Use this review to guide your next round of spending. Productivity gains and quieter reviews from staff justify further investment in the areas that still need it.

Frequently Advertisement Questions

Here are answers to common questions about reducing noise and improving sound quality in an open plan office. Each answer covers practical steps you can apply straight away.

How can noise be reduced effectively in an open-plan office?

You need to use three separate methods together: absorbing sound, blocking sound, and covering sound. Absorption works through soft materials like panels and carpets that soak up noise before it bounces around the room.

Blocking stops sound from moving between areas. Partitions, screens, and pods do this job well.

Covering, also called sound masking, uses background noise to hide speech and other distractions. On its own, no single method solves the problem. You get the best results when you combine all three.

Which types of furniture help improve sound absorption in a shared workspace?

Upholstered chairs and sofas soak up sound far better than furniture made from hard plastic or metal. Fabric-covered partitions between desks also help cut down noise levels.

Bookshelves and storage units filled with books or files can absorb sound too. High-backed chairs and booth seating work well because they block sound from travelling across the room whilst also absorbing some of it.

Where should acoustic panels be placed for the best results in an office?

Ceiling panels work well because sound often bounces off flat ceilings and travels across large distances. Wall panels placed at ear height, roughly 1.2 to 1.5 metres from the floor, catch sound waves at the point where most conversations happen.

You should focus on areas with hard, flat surfaces first, as these reflect sound the most. Placing panels near photocopiers, printers, and busy walkways can also reduce noise at its source.

What décor choices can help control echo and reverberation in an open office?

Wall art made from fabric or felt reduces echo better than framed prints under glass. Textured wall coverings, such as woven panels or fabric wraps, also help break up sound waves.

Adding plants throughout the office can absorb some sound too, though the effect is smaller than with dedicated acoustic materials. Choosing softer, matte finishes over glossy surfaces on walls and furniture can reduce sound reflection as well.

How can meeting areas and quiet zones be designed to limit sound disruption?

Meeting rooms and quiet zones work best when placed away from busy walkways, printers, and shared kitchen areas. Enclosed pods or rooms with proper acoustic seals stop sound leaking in or out.

Double-glazed glass partitions with acoustic seals at the top and bottom can block speech sounds whilst still letting light through. For quiet zones, soft furnishings and full enclosure, rather than partial screening, give the strongest results.

Are carpets, curtains and upholstered furnishings effective for improving office acoustics?

Carpets absorb sound far better than hard flooring like tile or laminate, cutting down on footstep noise and general reverberation. Curtains made from heavy fabric can absorb sound near windows, where glass would otherwise reflect noise back into the room.

Upholstered furnishings, including chairs, sofas, and fabric room dividers, all contribute to lowering overall noise levels. Using these materials together across a floor gives better results than relying on just one type.