Which Office Type Best Supports Focus Work When Concentration Demands Are High?

By Dr. Aram Seddigh · Updated 4 September 2026

When concentration demands are high, office type matters more; cell offices showed the lowest distraction and cognitive stress, while flex offices reduced part of the strain better than open-plan offices.

That is an important correction to a workplace debate that often becomes too simple. Many organisations still talk about office type as if the decision were mainly between open for collaboration or enclosed for focus.

A Swedish study by Aram Seddigh and colleagues points to a more useful conclusion. For employees whose jobs required high concentration, distraction increased in almost every office type except cell offices. Cognitive stress also increased in almost every office type except cell offices and flex offices.

That does not mean one office type is always right. It means the cognitive demands of the work need to shape the decision before layout, density, and zoning are locked.

What did the study show about office type and concentration demands?

The study covered 1241 employees from five organisations and compared six office types in relation to distraction, cognitive stress, exhaustion, depersonalisation, personal efficiency, and general health.

The most useful result is not a simple ranking of office types, but the interaction between office type and the need for concentration at work. Cell offices were associated with lower levels of distraction and cognitive stress. Flex offices were associated with lower distraction than other open office types.

For the group with high concentration demands, the differences became sharper. They reported more distraction in every office type except cell offices, and more cognitive stress in every office type except cell offices and flex offices. That is why the conclusion is more useful than the usual question of open versus closed. The real issue is how well the environment fits the cognitive demands of the work.

Why do concentration demands change what counts as a good office solution?

Because the same workplace rarely serves every role in the same way. An environment that works well for quick coordination, project interaction, and daily visibility may be much weaker for work that depends on uninterrupted thought, memory, analysis, and recovery from distraction.

If the organisation does not separate those needs in the decision base, office type easily becomes a general principle instead of a work tool. Open environments then end up carrying too much focus work, while enclosed settings get planned without enough precision about which tasks actually need them.

That is where many office projects become too blunt. Layout is defined before the organisation has defined which parts of the work are most sensitive to distraction and cognitive load.

Why are flex offices especially interesting in this study?

Flex offices appear more nuanced here than a standard open layout. The study linked flex offices to lower distraction than other open office types, and for the high-concentration group they also looked better than other open offices in relation to cognitive stress.

That does not mean flex offices automatically work well. But it does suggest that a more varied workplace, where different work modes can be supported better, may be more useful than one large open setting when focus work matters.

For decision-makers, that difference matters. The practical question is not whether the workplace should be modern or flexible in a generic sense. It is whether it actually provides the right balance of focus settings, accessibility, and workable choice.

Open-plan size is a risk factor in its own right

The larger the open-plan office, the more irrelevant stimuli, simultaneous activities and interruptions compete for attention. A study of cognitively demanding tasks found greater performance loss in large open-plan offices than in smaller ones, precisely when the task required concentration.

That does not mean large open-plan offices always perform worse. It means density and cost arguments should not decide on their own when the work being supported is focus-critical. Space cost is quick to calculate. The performance loss does not appear in the calculation, but it can be just as expensive.

Cell offices do not solve focus on their own

The same study points somewhere unexpected: cell offices did not emerge as an uncomplicated answer. The results suggested that cell offices can, in some cases, carry negative effects on performance resembling those in large open-plan offices. The researchers themselves note that the finding needs replication.

This is not an argument against cell offices. It is an argument against conclusions that are too simple. An office decision should not rest on the assumption that closed always means focus and open always means collaboration.

The question is not open or closed, but which work is being supported

A later study compared open and closed office environments using observation and interviews. Open environments eased collaboration and communication but reduced privacy and increased noise exposure. Closed environments gave better support for focus and confidential conversations. The researchers land on a combination, not on a choice between the two.

A workplace almost always has to support several kinds of work at once. Choose open for the sake of collaboration without securing room for focus, and friction appears quickly. Choose closed as the default, and the environment becomes slow for workflows that depend on fast interaction. The important question is therefore not which office type is best in general, but which work matters most to support and which trade-offs you are prepared to make.

Which mistakes do organisations make when they choose office type for focus work?

The first mistake is letting density or standard layout logic lead the decision before work requirements do. That turns office type into a property logic instead of a business decision.

The second mistake is treating focus as an individual productivity issue rather than a workplace issue. If high-concentration work is central in parts of the business, that has to show up in the environment strategy.

The third mistake is assuming that open environments can always be corrected later with minor adjustments. If the basic logic around concentration demands, distraction, and access to the right settings is weak from the start, correction usually becomes slower, more expensive, and less accurate.

What does a stronger decision base look like before office type is chosen?

It starts by identifying which roles and tasks have the highest concentration demands, and when during the week those demands actually occur. The organisation then needs to understand which kinds of disturbance are most costly: noise, movement, visual interruption, lack of privacy, or constant cognitive switching.

The next step is to decide which mix of settings is actually required. Does the business need more cell rooms or quiet focus environments? A better flex logic? Or is the problem mainly that open environments are being used for the wrong kinds of work?

This is where workplace analysis becomes necessary. Without a structured decision base, office type easily turns into a generic design preference when it should instead be a controlled decision about how the business can work better.

Which questions should you answer before deciding on office type?

Before moving forward, the organisation should be able to answer at least the following:

• Which parts of the work require the longest uninterrupted concentration periods?
• Where does distraction and cognitive stress currently appear most strongly in the workplace?
• Which groups need privacy every day, and which need it only occasionally?
• Are flexible settings genuinely usable in practice, or are they mostly open areas under a different label?
• Is the office type decision grounded in workplace analysis or in a general layout preference?

Those questions improve the decision because they bring work requirements back into a debate that otherwise slips too easily into symbolism.

Source

Source supporting this article: Journal of Environmental Psychology, “Concentration requirements modify the effect of office type on indicators of health and performance”, published 2014-02-07. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.01.009.