Open Office Interior That Sustains Collaboration and Focus

Open offices promised collaboration, but their biggest side effect is noise. According to Oxford research, only 1% of employees report being able to concentrate at their desk without interruption.

Reconciling collaboration and focused work is the central design challenge of the open office.

Three Reasons Collaboration Spaces Break Down

The rationale for adopting open offices is clear: lower the walls between departments, increase impromptu meetings, and accelerate the circulation of ideas.

In practice, however, noise is the first thing employees complain about. When desk-side conversations, phone calls, and keyboard sounds arrive simultaneously, focused work collapses.

01 · Noise Level

As more people occupy the same floor area, noise grows not arithmetically but exponentially. Conversations from adjacent desks are the most frequent source of complaints.

Recovery time is not negligible either. Reports indicate it takes an average of 23 minutes to return to focus after a single auditory interruption.

02 · Insufficient Space Types

Open offices tend to provide only one type of desk grid. Focused individual work, 2–3-person impromptu meetings, 5–10-person workshops, and post-lunch rest each require different acoustic conditions, furniture, and circulation patterns.

Focus workstations in particular must be designed so that sound is blocked while remaining within the visual boundary of other activities.

03 · Failure to Accommodate Flexible Work

As hybrid attendance, freelance contracts, and external meeting frequency increase, headcount fluctuates daily. Fixed desks lead to growing empty seats, while on other days meeting rooms are in short supply.

Power, Wi-Fi, and access permissions must also be reconfigurable in response to headcount changes. If the infrastructure cannot keep up with the furniture, collaboration space immediately reverts to inefficiency.

Sound Absorption — The Most Frequently Overlooked Variable

In domestic interior practice, sound absorption is often pushed behind finishes and lighting in the priority queue. In many cases, reverberation only becomes apparent after employees move in post-construction.

The three surfaces that govern sound absorption are the ceiling, walls, and floor. Since the ceiling accounts for more than 30% of the total area, ceiling material with an NRC (Noise Reduction Coefficient) of 0.7 or above is the primary investment priority.

The floor is often overlooked, yet it is the direct transmission path for footfall and chair movement noise. Cushion-backed carpet significantly reduces impact sound compared to hard flooring and, under certain conditions, adds absorptive benefit as well.

The same principle applies to seating. Fabric-upholstered chairs meaningfully raise the overall average sound absorption of an office compared to hard surfaces such as leather or wood.

Sound absorption investment priority — ① ceiling (NRC ≥ 0.85 absorptive ceiling tile) → ② floor (cushion-backed carpet) → ③ chairs and sofas (fabric upholstery) → ④ walls (PET or melamine panels) → ⑤ desk screens (workstation partitions with an absorptive core). The first two steps cover the whole room, while desk screens add localized control at focus seats.

Divide the Space Into 4 Zones

Zoning is not about erecting partitions; it is about matching the right acoustic and furniture combination to the nature of each activity.

The table below summarizes the acoustic requirements and recommended solutions for four representative zones at a glance.

Scenario-Based Immediate Selection

Real decisions happen on a floor plan. The four scenarios below address the most common open-office cases, with a primary selection and rationale provided for each.

Furniture — A Grid That Withstands Headcount Fluctuation

The essence of collaboration is people naturally being aware of one another's work. Because furniture layout governs sightlines and circulation, furniture selection is itself a collaboration strategy.

Modular and mobile furniture keeps reconfiguration costs low as headcount fluctuates. The key goes beyond choosing easy-to-move pieces — it is designing technological flexibility so that individuals and groups alike can switch modes quickly.

Power outlets and network ports must be installed at the same granularity as the furniture grid. The moment a user moves furniture and the infrastructure cannot follow, collaboration retreats to fixed assigned seats.

Desk Screens — The Closest Absorptive Surface

As noted earlier, sound absorption begins at the ceiling, floor, and walls. But the point where adjacent conversation originates and reaches the ear is at eye level over the desk. A desk screen placed between workers interrupts sound across the shortest distance between source and ear, so a screen with an absorptive core blocks the direct path of neighboring speech with very little surface area.

The form of the screen changes the character of the zone. A straight front screen cuts both the sightline and the conversation of the person seated opposite, creating a focus seat; L-shaped and side screens loosely enclose 2–3-person collaboration seats. A low partition keeps sightlines open while absorbing only desk-surface reflections, reconciling collaborative awareness with noise control.

When absorptive screens attach to the desk system as modules, they hold up under headcount fluctuation. Among domestic workstation series, Fursys FlowFinder is one example that integrates this kind of modular screen configuration. Simply adding or removing a screen, or adjusting its height, lets the same desk grid move between focus and collaboration modes while resolving both a partition’s visual boundary and absorptive performance in a single component.

Frequently Asked Questions

In Summary

The collaboration promise of the open office disappears the moment acoustics fail. Build up sound absorption assets in order — ceiling absorption → floor carpet → fabric furniture — then layer on 4-zone visual coding, and use modular furniture to absorb headcount variation.

DIN 18041 Group B's A/V ≥ 0.30 becomes the absorptive area target on the floor plan, and ASTM E1130's STI < 0.3 becomes the spec for focus booths. Standards are not the designer's adversary — they are the most concise language for reconciling collaboration and concentration.

Glossary

NRC (Noise Reduction Coefficient): arithmetic mean of absorption coefficients at 250 / 500 / 1,000 / 2,000 Hz. Values near 0 indicate reflection; values near 1 indicate absorption.

STC (Sound Transmission Class): a single-number rating of how well a wall or door blocks sound transmission. Recommended STC for open-office meeting rooms: 35–45.

STI (Speech Transmission Index): a scale of 0–1. Values approaching 1 indicate speech is clearly intelligible. Recommended STI < 0.3 for focus workstations.

A/V (Absorption / Volume ratio): equivalent sound absorption area per unit room volume. DIN 18041 Group B open office recommendation: ≥ 0.30 m²/m³.

RT60 (Reverberation Time): the time required for sound pressure to decay 60 dB after the source stops. Recommended for offices: 0.4–0.6 s.

References

[1] DIN 18041:2016 Acoustic quality in rooms — Specifications and instructions for the room acoustic design. ANSI Webstore: https://webstore.ansi.org/standards/din/din180412016

[2] ASTM E1130-16 Standard Test Method for Objective Measurement of Speech Privacy in Open Plan Spaces Using Articulation Index: https://store.astm.org/e1130-16r21.html

[3] Carpet and Rug Institute, Acoustical Characteristics of Carpet (Technical Bulletin): https://carpet-rug.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Acoustical-Characteristics-of-Carpet.pdf

[4] HillPoint Global, Open Office Acoustics — The 66 Percent Productivity Drop: https://www.hillpointglobal.com/blog/open-office-acoustics-the-66-percent-productivity-drop/

[5] Oxford Economics & Plantronics, When the Walls Come Down — Workplace Noise Study (Speakwise 2026 round-up): https://speakwiseapp.com/blog/workplace-noise-statistics