What office occupiers can learn from high-end hotels about acoustic design

28th May 2025

By Anthony Brown, Chief Marketing Officer, BW: Workplace Experts 

As employers step up their efforts to bring staff back into the office, the expectations around workplace quality are shifting. The office is no longer seen as simply a space for collaboration or meetings. Increasingly, it is being re-established as the primary place where work gets done. That places greater pressure on how well it functions on a daily basis, not just how it looks.

One of the most consistent sources of dissatisfaction in modern offices is poor acoustic performance. In many fit-outs, particularly with small and medium-sized occupiers, sound design is still treated as a secondary concern. Occupiers who overlook it risk undermining the very productivity they aim to support.

There is a useful comparison to be made here with the hospitality sector. High-end hotels do not treat acoustic comfort as an optional extra. They treat it as a basic expectation. In a well-run hotel, guests rarely hear conversations from adjoining rooms or noise from corridors. Public spaces are carefully zoned so that quiet areas remain genuinely calm, even when the building is busy. This is not accidental. It is the result of design decisions made early in the process and tested thoroughly before handover.

The same principles can and should be applied to commercial offices. Partition walls should extend to the slab. Ceilings should be acoustically sealed between enclosed rooms. Materials should be selected not only for appearance but also for their contribution to sound absorption. Meeting rooms and private areas should be tested to confirm they perform as intended.

These lessons are especially relevant now, as more occupiers plan for a return to full-time working patterns. According to a 2023 survey by the Remark Group, over 60 per cent of UK office workers said that noise was a regular barrier to concentration. A global study by Leesman found that fewer than one in three employees were satisfied with the noise levels in their offices. These are not isolated issues. They have a direct impact on day-to-day productivity, privacy and staff retention.

Occupiers who treat acoustics as a core element of their fit-out strategy, rather than a value-engineered extra, are more likely to deliver workplaces that genuinely support effective work. The hotel sector already understands that how a space sounds matters as much as how it looks. Offices should be no different.

A professional workspace should not only look the part. It should also sound the part.

Anthony Brown, Chief Marketing Officer, BW: Workplace Experts