5 Office Acoustic Solutions for Coworking Spaces

You’re on a call, close to closing that deal and suddenly a collaborative session erupts three desks away. Your focus vanishes. The client notices. Productivity grinds to a halt.

If you work in a shared or coworking space, we’ll bet this scenario is all too familiar. We’ve also been there, done that. Coworking spaces are brilliant for community, but they often come with one big trade-off: noise.

At Gravity Office Interiors, we’ve seen firsthand how the right acoustic office solutions can restore calm, protect focus and let your team work without compromise. Stick around as we reveal practical ways to reclaim your workplace (without ripping out walls or overcomplicating your fit out).

Common Acoustic Challenges in Shared Offices

Sound in an open office doesn’t just travel. It ricochets. Every conversation or keyboard click creates a sound wave that bounces with hard surfaces like glass walls, exposed ceilings and polished floors.

When you consider this alongside numerous studies, like one from PubMed Central, it shows employees in shared or open-plan offices perform around 14% worse on concentration tasks compared to those in private offices, you can’t argue with the fact that when your office is too noisy, business slows down.

It’s an all-too-common factor in coworking spaces. Stop us if you’ve heard these ones before:

• Open-Plan Layouts

  This office design is great for collaborating, but the lack of partitions can mean that noise spreads more than intended. Focus workers often suffer when conversations are only a few feet away.

• Hard Surfaces

  Exposed concrete, brick, glass and industrial finishes are all trending for good reason. They look amazing. But they also reflect sound, making offices feel louder than they actually are.

• Mixed Uses

  In shared spaces, meeting areas, phone calls and quiet zones often coexist within the same footprint. Without clear acoustic boundaries, sound travels freely – and everyone pays the price.

• Aesthetics Over Acoustics

  All too often, design prioritises style over function. Beautiful finishes are great, but if noise levels aren’t addressed, the environment can actively work against your team’s performance. The good news is, acoustic’s don’t have to be unsightly! At Gravity Office Interiors, we deliver solutions that combine form AND function.

Fortunately, none of these challenges are unsolvable. We’ve worked with several clients across Gloucestershire who’ve faced these exact acoustic headaches. Here are a few solutions we’ve implemented that have made a measurable difference..

5 Office Acoustic Solutions for Coworking Spaces

Noise might be inevitable in a shared office, but it doesn’t have to impact your business performance. Here are six tried-and-tested acoustic office solutions that make even the busiest coworking spaces feel productive.

Did you know your art can be acoustic? That’s right. A literal picture of your dog can absorb sounds, reduce distractions and help your team focus. Products like bespoke acoustic art, fluted panels or textured wall treatments soften noise by breaking up sound waves and preventing them from bouncing across hard surfaces.

Beyond reducing noise, these pieces are a subtle way to reinforce brand identity. For example, this moss wall panel in our project in Tamworth features the bespoke company logo. Positioned in the reception, it conveys confidence whilst also helping absorb ambient sound, ensuring any first impressions aren’t overshadowed by office noise.

Some of the biggest acoustic impact comes from above. Covering one of the largest surface areas, your office ceiling is a surprisingly powerful tool for managing sound in an open or shared office. Where possible, we recommend acoustic ceiling tiles – they absorb and dampen noise. You’ll notice differences like reduced echoes as a level of sound is blocked from bouncing across the office.

When a full suspended ceiling isn’t possible, ceiling baffles are a clever workaround. These “floating ceilings” hang from the soffit and interrupt sound waves exactly where they’re most disruptive. In Quayside Wealth’s office, we used bespoke baffles to target high-traffic areas. The product design reflected their energetic, outgoing personality while solving the very practical problem of noise – proof that effective acoustics doesn’t have to compromise style.

An easy way to create focus and privacy is to build it into the office itself. Acoustic office pods and booths are a dedicated, “soundproof” space for calls, video meetings or concentrated work – without the need to knock down walls or expand your footprint. Ideal for coworking spaces or leased offices, they let you add functional space almost instantly. We say “soundproof” with a wink here because, let’s be honest, nothing is ever completely silent – but these pods go a long way towards keeping distractions at bay.

The wonderful thing about pods and booths is their versatility. You can choose from single-person pods or larger booths, depending on your team’s requirements. They’re plug-and-play solutions that can be dropped into your office, whether that’s internally or externally, ready to install with minimal disruption.

We’re big fans ourselves. We have 5 different acoustic office pods dotted across our own HQ – so we know firsthand how they can transform open spaces into flexible workplaces.

Another way to tackle noise is to organise your space more thoughtfully. Zoning allows you to define collaborative and focused areas so your team can work without constant interruptions. And no, you don’t always need walls or partitions to do this. In coworking spaces, structural changes aren’t usually an option anyway, so we have a few clever alternatives.

In this fit out project in Tenbury Wells, we’ve used hanging acoustic screens to separate quieter, one-to-one areas from the collaborative, open-plan office. These are a visual divider that also absorbs sound, helping to reduce ambient noise for adjacent desks. In a few projects, we’ve also used planters as a natural divider. These are made from materials that soften noise while adding a touch of greenery to enhance wellbeing and soften the visual environment. Another option is acoustic desk screens – a simple solution that creates personal zones of focus without removing the design of an open plan office.

When designing workplaces, we often think about the type of furnishings we use. Soft and natural materials, in particular, play a big role in acoustic design. They absorb sound rather than reflecting it, helping to reduce echoes and the general hum of an open office.

Rugs, upholstered chairs, fabric panels and even office flooring all contribute to dampening noise, creating pockets of calm even in busy coworking spaces. Plants and natural materials can also act as an acoustic buffer, too. For example, in this small office fit out in Cheltenham, moss wall panels brought the perfect level of acoustic comfort and biophilia to the office.

What’s the Impact?

Truth is, noise isn’t just annoying. It costs time, and sometimes even revenue. Distractions in shared workplaces slow decision-making, increase errors and frustrate teams. So, we see it as a valuable investment in acoustic office solutions as an opportunity to turn your workplace into one that gives your people what they need to perform at their best.

Just take this feedback about the single acoustic booth we fitted in a creative marketing space in Cheltenham:

Coworking (Without the Chaos)

If you’re thinking about tackling office noise, the best place to start is small. Identify the areas where sound is most disruptive, whether that’s a cluster of desks, a corner by the meeting room or the open-plan hot desking zone. Once you know these hotspots, you can make targeted interior solutions that have a huge impact on your team.

Bringing in specialists early – like us – will help to ensure that every investment counts. Together, we can assess your challenges to find a suitable solution that will support your team for years to come, ensuring your coworking space performs as it should: flexible, productive and comfortable for everyone.

Ready to reclaim your space? Let’s talk about the acoustic interior solutions that actually work.