How to Improve Speech Privacy in an Open-Plan Office
Open-plan offices save space, but they come with a cost: speech carries. Confidential calls, HR conversations, client meetings - all overheard several desks away. Fixing it takes more than one product.
Speech privacy isn't the same as speech clarity
Speech privacy is the ability to not be overheard outside the room or area you're speaking in. Speech intelligibility is the opposite goal - being heard clearly within a meeting. The two are often in tension, which is exactly the territory covered in our guide to sound masking vs sound treatment - they're different techniques solving different problems, and most offices need both.
Reduce reflection first
Hard, reflective surfaces - glass, plasterboard, exposed concrete - bounce speech further than it would otherwise travel. Ceiling baffles or rafts and wall panels reduce how far sound carries by absorbing it at the source, rather than letting it bounce across the floorplate.
Break the sightline
Desk-height screens and partitions between workstations interrupt the direct path sound travels along. Combined with absorption overhead, this measurably cuts how far a normal conversation is understood from.
Add masking where treatment alone isn't enough
Sound masking systems introduce a gentle, engineered background sound that raises the threshold at which nearby speech becomes intelligible to a passer-by. It's a different technique to absorption - masking doesn't quieten a room, it changes what's understandable - and the two are frequently combined in practice.
For genuinely confidential conversations, treat the room itself
Open-plan measures help, but they have limits. Meeting rooms intended for confidential conversations need their own acoustic treatment and a well-sealed door or partition. Our acoustic noise survey service measures existing speech intelligibility (STI) before we recommend anything, so treatment is specified against your actual starting point, not a guess.
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