How loud is an open-plan office?
An open-plan office is typically about 50 to 55 dBA LAeq. A Swedish field study measured 50.1 LAeq in shared and open-plan offices and 49 LAeq in an 'active zone', compared with 34.8 LAeq in private cell offices.
- Level
- 49–55 dBAA-weighted sound level
- Daily limit
- No daily limitNIOSH, at the loud end
- Versus conversation
- 1/11 energyabout 2.1× quieter
What the numbers mean
How it was measured. LAeq during working hours in shared and open-plan offices (Swedish field study: 50.1 LAeq; 49 LAeq in an active zone); 55 LAeq cited by the same authors as a common open-plan level used in laboratory studies.
Open-plan offices are not loud in hearing-damage terms, but they are loud enough to distract. Seddigh and colleagues (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2020) measured 50.1 LAeq in shared and open-plan offices against 34.8 LAeq in cell offices, a difference of about 15 dB, and found people in the open-plan spaces scored about 14% worse on a concentration task.
The same paper notes that laboratory studies commonly use about 55 LAeq to represent an open-plan office, and that levels approaching 50 LAeq are typical in real ones. In the activity-based offices studied, the active zone without noise rules reached 49 LAeq while quiet zones and lounges sat at 41 to 45 LAeq.
The problem is less the overall level than intelligible speech: a conversation you can follow is far more distracting than steady background noise at the same level.
Is it safe?
Below 85 dBA, the level NIOSH allows for a full 8-hour day. At this level, sound is not a hearing risk however long it lasts, though it can still disturb sleep or concentration.
Protecting your hearing
Hearing protection is not needed. For concentration, use quiet rooms, move away from busy walkways, or use noise-cancelling headphones at low volume.
Earplug and earmuff ratings (NRR in the US, SNR in the UK and EU) are lab figures; real-world protection is usually lower. How to read the ratings.
Compared with sounds nearby
Using midpoints of each range. Energy multiplies by 10 every 10 dB; perceived loudness roughly doubles (why).
- Private office (32–34.8 dBA): this has about 72× its sound energy and sounds about 3.6× as loud.
- Refrigerator (40–43 dBA): this has about 11× its sound energy and sounds about 2.1× as loud.
- Hospital ward (50–60 dBA): it has about 2× the sound energy of this and sounds about 1.2× as loud.
- Classroom (35–77 dBA): it has about 2.5× the sound energy of this and sounds about 1.3× as loud.
- Normal conversation (55–70 dBA): conversation has about 11× the energy of this.
Questions
What is the noise level in an open-plan office?
About 49 to 55 LAeq; a Swedish field study measured 50.1 LAeq.
Is open-plan office noise bad for productivity?
In one field study, open-plan workers did about 14% worse on a memory task than people in cell offices about 15 dB quieter.
Sources
- Objective measures of cognitive performance in activity based workplaces and traditional office types, Journal of Environmental Psychology. Supports: 50.1 LAeq open-plan.
was higher for employees in the shared/open-plan office (50.1 LAeq) compared with employees in the cell office (34.8 LAeq)
Checked 2026-11-02. - Objective measures of cognitive performance in activity based workplaces and traditional office types, Journal of Environmental Psychology. Supports: dB_low: 49 LAeq.
reached the highest levels of 49 LAeq in the active zone
Checked 2026-11-02. - Objective measures of cognitive performance in activity based workplaces and traditional office types, Journal of Environmental Psychology. Supports: dB_high: 55 LAeq.
common noise levels for open-plan offices (e.g. 55 LAeq)
Checked 2026-11-02.
This page is general information, not medical advice. If you have ringing in your ears, muffled hearing or any change in your hearing, see an audiologist or your doctor.