Video Calls and Open-Plan Office Noise: How to Plan the Space So Calls Don’t Disturb Others

In an open-plan office, the biggest distraction is rarely a ringing phone or loud laughter. It is the calm voice of a colleague joining their third video call of the morning. Speech, not the overall sound level, is what mostly decides whether open-plan office noise gets in the way of work.

Most open-plan offices were designed at a time when conversations happened in meeting rooms. Today, many meetings take place right at the desk, so the space has to support two different ways of working at once: talking and focusing. In this article, we look at how to balance the two when planning the space and choosing furniture.

Before choosing furniture, it is worth doing the maths. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that 57% of meetings are ad hoc calls with no calendar invite. In other words, more than half of all conversations start spontaneously, and people take them wherever they happen to be sitting.

That is why the need for call spaces is best assessed against the team’s actual habits:

• how many people are in the office on an average day;
• how many of them have several calls a day (sales, customer service, project managers);
• how long a typical call lasts – 10 minutes or an hour;
• which hours of the day are the busiest.

Timing matters too. The same study shows that half of all meetings take place between 9 and 11 am and between 1 and 3 pm. That is when call spaces run out most often, so plan for peak hours rather than the daily average.

As a starting point, you can plan one call space for roughly every ten people in the office on a given day, then adjust the number to how your team works. We covered how to calculate the total number of workstations in our article on hybrid office planning.

Even with enough booths, some calls will still happen at the desk. That is why it makes sense to divide the space according to how much talking happens in it.

• Active zone – for teams that spend a lot of time on the phone or on video calls. It is best planned closer to the entrance, the kitchen or meeting rooms.
• Transition zone – collaboration areas, high tables and soft seating for quick discussions.
• Quiet zone – further from walkways, for work that requires concentration.

When planning zones, it is worth talking to the teams themselves. It often turns out that the people who talk the most sit right in the middle of the space simply because there were free desks there, not because it suits their work. A small change in seating can sometimes do more than new furniture.

Cabinets, shelving, acoustic screens or booths can act as buffers between zones. Distance helps as well, but on its own it is often not enough: in a space without sound-absorbing surfaces, speech remains intelligible much further away than the next desk.

A space works best when the team agrees on how to use it. The rules should be short and clear:

• a short call of a few minutes at the desk – with a headset and a lowered voice;
• a longer call or a meeting where you will do a lot of talking – in a booth or a room;
• no calls in the quiet zone;
• book booths only for longer calls, so that some remain free for short ones.

People are usually willing to change their habits. In the survey mentioned above, 72% of open-plan office workers said they would lower their voice if a light signal – a noise indicator – warned them (Di Blasio et al., 2019). A clear agreement and a simple reminder often work better than strict bans.

How many acoustic booths does an office need?

There is no single standard. As a guide, you can plan one call space for roughly every ten people in the office on a given day. If the team includes many sales, customer service or project management roles, you will need more. A few weeks of observing how many calls take place and how long they last will show the need most accurately.

Are noise-cancelling headphones enough?

Headphones help the person wearing them, but they do not reduce the noise made by the person speaking. Wearing headphones all day is also uncomfortable. They work as an additional measure, but they do not replace space planning and acoustic solutions.

Do acoustic desk screens help during calls?

Yes, if they are high enough and made of sound-absorbing material. Screens block part of the direct sound travelling to neighbouring desks, but they work best together with acoustic ceilings or wall panels that reduce reverberation across the room.

What if there is no room for separate meeting rooms?

A single-person phone booth takes up about one square metre and can be installed without construction work. You can also create semi-private spots with high-back sofas or armchairs and separate the active zone from the quiet one with suspended partitions.

Can an acoustic booth be moved if the office layout changes?

In most cases, yes. Acoustic booths are assembled from components, so they can be taken apart and moved to another spot or even another office. When planning the new location, make sure there is a power connection and enough space around the booth for ventilation to work.