Best Acoustic Furniture Brands for Open-Plan Offices

Most complaints about an open-plan office get filed under a single word, noise, but the word covers at least three separate problems. A colleague's phone call arrives too clearly at a desk eight metres away. A room rings, because every surface in it is glass, plasterboard or laminate. A conversation cannot be held without the next row of desks following it. Furniture is sold as the answer to all three, and the products are not interchangeable.

A felt panel and a phone booth are doing different physics. Porous absorbers convert sound energy into heat inside the material, so less of it comes back into the room. An enclosure puts mass, a sealed air gap and a door between one talker and everybody else. A third approach, raising the background level until speech stops being intelligible at distance, is not furniture at all but an electronic system, though it turns up in the same specifications and the same standards. Because the jobs are different, the test methods are different, and a figure quoted from the wrong standard describes a problem you were not trying to solve.

This guide groups manufacturers by what their products physically do, and sets out the standard that describes each job. The brands here are listed rather than ranked, because a booth and a ceiling baffle cannot be compared on the same number. Each one links to its page in the directory, and the fuller list sits on the acoustic furniture brands page.

Absorbing, blocking, masking: three jobs, three standards

Before the brands, the vocabulary. Getting these three apart is what stops a specification from asking a panel to do a booth's work.

Absorption, and the numbers that describe it

Absorption is measured in a reverberation room. ISO 354:2003, Acoustics — Measurement of sound absorption in a reverberation room, is in its second edition, dated 2003-05-15. Its scope specifies a method of measuring the sound absorption coefficient of acoustical materials used as wall or ceiling treatments, or the equivalent sound absorption area of objects, such as furniture, persons or space absorbers. That second half matters for open-plan work: a free-standing screen or a suspended baffle is an object, and its result is reported as an equivalent absorption area in square metres, not as a coefficient of a surface.

ISO 11654:1997, Acoustics — Sound absorbers for use in buildings — Rating of sound absorption, in its first edition dated 1997-04-01, is what turns that measurement into the numbers on a data sheet. It converts one-third-octave data into a practical sound absorption coefficient, alpha-p, in octave bands, then reduces those to a single weighted value, alpha-w, by shifting a reference curve until it fits. Where alpha-p exceeds the shifted reference curve by 0,25 or more, a shape indicator L, M or H is appended, which is why ratings appear in forms such as 0,70(MH). The rating starts at 250 Hz, so nothing below that band reaches the single number. Results depend on the depth of construction and the way the sample is mounted, so the same material can be rated differently in two different build-ups. The standard also notes that the rating is often not suitable for application to single items, such as chairs and baffles. Clause 1.1 states that in annex B a classification method, based on these single numbers, is given for information; annexes A, B and C are all informative rather than normative.

North American data sheets use ASTM's equivalent. ASTM C423-23e1, Standard Test Methods for Sound Absorption and Sound Absorption Coefficients by the Reverberation Room Method, defines the sound absorption coefficient as the fraction of the randomly incident sound power absorbed by the surface, and covers three cases: a surface, an object such as an office screen, and acoustical ceiling tile. Noise reduction coefficient and sound absorption average are both computed from C423 measurements. They are not interchangeable with alpha-w, which ISO 11654 arrives at by curve fitting rather than by averaging, so a sheet quoting an NRC and a sheet quoting an alpha-w are not directly comparable even when the underlying material is the same.

Blocking, and the standard written for pods

An enclosure is not rated by absorption at all. ISO 23351-1:2020, Acoustics — Measurement of speech level reduction of furniture ensembles and enclosures — Part 1: Laboratory method, exists for exactly this product class. It reports a single value, the A-weighted speech level reduction D_S,A, derived from sound power measurements in one-octave bands from 125 Hz to 8000 Hz taken in two scenarios, one with the ensemble or enclosure present and one without. It is a laboratory method, so it describes the product rather than the room it ends up in, and it does not cover the full acoustic performance of a building element.

This is the number worth asking for when a booth is under consideration. A pod described only by an absorption class is being characterised by how its lining behaves, not by how much of a conversation stays inside it.

The room, not the product

Two further standards describe the finished space. ISO 3382-3:2022, Acoustics — Measurement of room acoustic parameters — Part 3: Open plan offices, is in its second edition dated 2022-01 and cancels and replaces the 2012 edition. It works along a line of workstations and reports a family of parameters: the distraction distance r_D, the spatial decay rate of A-weighted sound pressure level of speech D_2,S, the A-weighted sound pressure level of speech at four metres L_p,A,S,4m, the comfort distance r_C, the average A-weighted background noise level L_p,B, and the speech transmission index those are derived from. Its own definition of a workstation is a place equipped with at least a chair and a table with a minimum area of 70 cm by 70 cm, which may also contain table or floor mounted screens, storage units, display units and luminaires. In other words, the furniture is inside the measurement, not separate from it. The standard also defines a sound masking system, and it carries a clause on typical single-number values plus an informative annex giving examples of them, which is the closest the document comes to a target. The catalogue record is the ISO entry for ISO 3382-3:2022.

ISO 22955:2021, Acoustics — Acoustic quality of open office spaces, comes at it from the brief rather than the measurement. It sorts open offices into six types by what happens in them: space type 1, activity not known yet, a vacant floor plate; space type 2, activity mainly focusing on outside of the room communication by telephone, audio or video; space type 3, activity mainly based on collaboration between people at the nearest workstations; space type 4, activity based on a small amount of collaborative work; space type 5, activity that can involve receiving public; and space type 6, combining activities within the same space. It references ISO 354 and ISO 11654 normatively, which is the formal link between a room-level brief and the product-level data sheet a manufacturer hands over.

Pods, booths and room-in-room systems

Framery is Finnish, and its own account of its beginning describes two colleagues at a Tampere IT company in 2010 who asked their manager about taking calls somewhere other than the open office, were told to buy him a phone booth, and left to build one. The current range is organised by occupancy: Framery One Compact and Framery One are described as optimal for one person, Framery Four for up to four people and Framery Six for up to six people, with Framery One Lounge as a seated variant.

Silentlab works in the same product class from the Czech Republic and splits its catalogue into two lines. The GEN4 series runs Spot, Focus, Chat2, Chat4, Summit4, Summit6 and Summit8; the Spark series runs Spark, Spark2 and Spark4. The naming convention makes the sizing ladder legible before any dimensions are opened.

Spain's Actiu reaches the same category from a general contract catalogue spanning eight product families. Its booth range, Qyos, is offered in five models covering one to six people, so a single family answers both the phone call and the four-person stand-up.

Austria's Bene trades under the line "Inspiring Offices. Since 1790" and treats enclosure as one part of a wider spatial system. Its Room system category covers room-structuring partitions, room-in-room systems and meeting boxes. PARCS, launched in 2009 with the designers Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd, is the range most often specified for the in-between spaces of an open floor; PARCS Causeway alone comprises benches, fence modules, walls and cabinets.

Citterio, one of the manufacturers on the Italian brands list, builds acoustic booths alongside architectural wall systems, and introduced its C_SS acoustic meeting booth in 2010. A supplier making both the partition wall and the free-standing box answers the same brief at two scales, which helps when a floor plate needs some enclosure built in and some of it movable.

Panels, screens and dividers

This is the larger group, and the one where the ISO 11654 caveats bite hardest, because a desk screen is an object rather than a wall treatment.

Abstracta is Swedish and is one of the four brands in Lammhults Design Group, alongside Lammhults, Ragnars and the Norwegian Fora Form. Its product navigation is a fair map of the whole category: acoustic wall panels, floor screens, desk screens, suspended absorbers, silent pods, acoustic furniture, products with writing boards, cubicles, acoustic lighting, ceiling baffles and ceiling panels, and acoustic wall art. Treating a supplier with that spread as a panel vendor understates what is on the price list.

Arper, also Italian, files its acoustic work under a Panels and Furnishings category whose sub-categories are wall-mounted panels, desk panels, freestanding panels, storage units and modular storage units, a reminder that storage furniture and acoustic treatment are often the same purchase. Parentesit, its modular sound-absorbing panel collection, comes in round and square versions and can be specified with integrated lighting and audio.

Poland's Bejot is direct about form factor. Flathouse is offered in sizes for one, four and six people, and the fora collection consists of modular sofas with acoustic walls, which is the middle ground between a screen and a sealed booth.

Belgium's BuzziSpace works largely in felt. BuzziFelt is made from 100% recycled PET bottles, the same feedstock several manufacturers in this group have settled on. The American contract manufacturer Haworth states that it is a shareholder in BuzziSpace, one of the ownership links worth knowing when a specification is assembled from more than one catalogue.

Caimi organises itself into two divisions: Snowsound, covering acoustics and wellbeing technologies, and Interiors, covering furniture, accessories and functional design. Caimi publishes that its Snowsound suspended sound-absorbing panels were tested in a reverberation room to UNI EN ISO 354 and obtained Class A sound absorption to UNI EN ISO 11654, a citation naming both the measurement standard and the rating standard, which is the pairing a data sheet should show.

De Vorm, from the Netherlands, has built its catalogue around PET felt and documents the production chain in public: bottles arrive at recycling centres in 250 kg compressed bales, are separated, cleaned and sorted, shredded into 1 cm flakes in a granulator, melted into polyester fibres in an extruder, then layered and needle-bound into felt before a single moulding action forms the finished part. The material is produced in Western Europe and designed for recyclability at end of life. Mute Flow is a wall panel with a wave pattern measuring 2390 x 790 x 32 mm that also exists as a room divider; the wider range takes in Mute Peak, Mute Fraction, the Onde panel and the Fost Bulb acoustic lamp, one of several products in this guide sitting in both the acoustic and lighting categories.

Kirei is the one company in this group based in the United States. Its range runs from panels and tiles to clouds and baffles, under the product names EchoPanel, EchoScreen, EchoSky, EchoLine, Mura and Kirei Ink.

Offecct was founded in Sweden in 1990 and is now part of the Norwegian group Flokk. Its catalogue is presented in two halves, furniture and acoustics, a clean structure for anyone who needs a sofa and a sound-absorbing panel on the same order.

Ceilings and overhead absorption

The largest uninterrupted surface in an open-plan office is above everyone's head, and it is usually the cheapest square metre of absorption available. Rockfon, part of the ROCKWOOL Group, works almost entirely in this plane. Its stone wool ceiling tiles include Rockfon Sonar, Rockfon Alaska, Rockfon Cinema Black, Rockfon Color-all and Rockfon Mono Acoustic; free-hanging formats include Rockfon Island and Rockfon Contour baffles, for floor plates where a full grid is not wanted or the services will not allow one. The group also owns Chicago Metallic, whose suspension systems carry the tiles, so grid and tile can be specified as one system.

Portugal's Vicoustic arrives at the office from studio acoustics. VicBooth Ultra is described as an acoustic booth for professional audio, voice-over and music recording, while VicBooth Office Plus is the office-facing line, offered as a 1 x 1 m phone booth, a 1 x 2 m duo and a 3 x 4 m meeting size.

How to read an acoustic data sheet

The brands above publish very different documents. A few habits make them comparable:

• Check which standard produced the number. ISO 354 with ISO 11654 gives an alpha-w; ASTM C423 gives an NRC or an SAA; ISO 23351-1 gives a D_S,A. Only the last of those describes an enclosure.
• For an object rather than a surface, such as a screen, a baffle or a free-hanging absorber, look for an equivalent sound absorption area in square metres, and for how many units were tested to produce it.
• Read the mounting. ISO 11654 results depend on the depth of construction, so a panel tested with an air gap behind it will not behave the same fixed flat to a wall.
• Note the shape indicator. A rating of 0,70(MH) tells you where the absorption sits in the spectrum, and speech energy is concentrated in the mid and high bands.
• Remember the 250 Hz floor. Nothing below that band appears in an alpha-w at all.
• Settle the room brief before comparing products. ISO 22955 space types 2 and 3 lead to different furniture on the same floor area.

Where these brands sit in the directory

Every manufacturer named above has a directory page carrying its country, founding year and catalogue detail. Beyond acoustics, most of them also appear on the office furniture brands page, and the Swedish contingent, Abstracta, Lammhults and Offecct among them, sits on the Swedish brands list, with De Vorm on the Dutch brands list.

For the wider contract market, the guide to office furniture brands covers manufacturers whose acoustic work is one line in a much longer catalogue, and office ergonomics fundamentals deals with the part of workplace comfort that no amount of felt will fix.