For activities that researcher Cal Newport describes as shallow work, such as sending emails or making phone calls, background noise may not be a major concern. Yet modern professions increasingly depend on deep work. Writing code or content and analyzing complex data require precision and uninterrupted focus, which open-plan offices are not designed to support.
How Much Noise Is Too Much?
Researchers from the University of Sydney and RWTH Aachen University measured an average noise level of 53.6 dB across 43 occupied open-plan offices. That is too high for focused work: the French standard cited in the study recommends levels of 40–45 dB for individual work requiring concentration. But how noise changes throughout the day also matters. Background levels in the offices measured were around 32 dB, while during the loudest periods, accounting for roughly one-tenth of the working day, levels exceeded 57 dB on average. These fluctuations can be particularly disruptive.
The type of noise matters, too. In a survey of 1,078 employees, Italian researchers examined what is known as irrelevant speech noise: sound from colleagues’ conversations, phone calls, and laughter. According to earlier studies cited by the authors, intelligible speech is the most frequently reported source of distraction in open-plan offices. Even when a conversation has nothing to do with our work, it can be difficult to ignore. The findings also showed that perceived disruption increases with the number of people in an office: employees in open-plan spaces rated it as more disruptive than those sharing an office with no more than five colleagues.
Noise affects employee satisfaction as well as performance. According to Haworth, it is one of the main reasons many people prefer working from home to working in an office. Up to 70% of workers report being distracted by workplace acoustics, and almost a third believe noise prevents them from performing at their best. The Italian survey revealed a similar picture: 66% of respondents working in open-plan offices identified loss of concentration as the main consequence of conversations around them.
The Cause Lies in the Layout Many employees use headphones to cope with noise.
- In an Italian survey, 32% of respondents said that listening to music or using noise-cancelling headphones was their most common strategy for dealing with noise in open-plan offices.
- But headphones only ease the symptoms, not the underlying problem—often a lack of spaces designed around different working needs.
- Open-plan offices do not have to be a dead end. They remain practical for teamwork and quick conversations.
- But no one collaborates all day, just as no one can spend the entire day focused on a single task.
People working in shared offices for two to five employees found noise less disruptive and were more likely to manage it by changing their surroundings—taking a break, moving elsewhere or closing the door. Employees in open-plan offices with acoustic treatments also reported less disruption than those working in spaces without them.
A well-designed office should therefore offer a range of settings: an area for teamwork, a quiet place for individual focus and a space for larger meetings across teams.
That is why we developed the GEN4 range of acoustic pods at SilentLab, providing quiet environments for both individuals and entire teams. With Class A speech level reduction, natural light and a ventilation system that supplies fresh air, GEN4 creates ideal conditions for focused work. The open-plan office can remain a place for collaboration, while focused work gets the space it needs.