Why Do Some Open Offices Work Better Than Others?

By Dr. Aram Seddigh · Published 19 August 2026

Some open offices work better because they provide stronger support for privacy, individual space, daylight, personal control, and a more carefully designed physical work environment.

That is a more useful conclusion than the usual argument about whether open offices work or not. The real question is why some open offices feel supportive while others create friction, distraction, and weaker perceived productivity.

A study published in Buildings analysed almost 10,000 post-occupancy evaluations from 77 Australian open-plan offices and then looked more closely at 20 offices with especially low or high satisfaction levels. That makes the source practically useful for organisations that need a better decision base before layout, density, and workplace rules are fixed.

The most important takeaway is that open offices do not perform as one single concept. Outcomes are shaped by the actual work conditions the environment provides.

What did the study show about the difference between better and weaker open offices?

The study compared open offices with low and high satisfaction levels across seven factors: building and office quality, thermal comfort and air quality, noise and privacy, personal control, connection to the outdoor environment, maintenance and visual comfort, and individual space.

In weaker open offices, noise and lack of privacy stood out as major problems. They also performed worse on daylight, views, and connection to the outdoor environment. In the stronger open offices, building and office quality stood out more clearly, together with better access to daylight, views, and outdoor connection.

That means the difference was not just the label attached to the layout. The difference was how well the workplace actually supported people through the working day.

Which problems kept appearing in the weaker open offices?

The researchers highlighted recurring complaints about background noise, weak acoustic and visual privacy, too few quiet rooms, crowded workstations, and a lack of useful support spaces for both collaboration and breaks.

There were also complaints about air quality and temperature. That matters because it shows that weak open offices are not only an acoustic problem. When several basic conditions are weak at the same time, perceived productivity also tends to weaken.

For decision-makers, that means an open office rarely fails for one isolated reason. It more often fails because several conditions are pulling in the wrong direction at once.

What characterised the better open offices?

The stronger offices performed better on building and office aesthetics and quality, spaces for breaks and collaboration, furnishing comfort, the ability to personalise the workspace, and access to daylight and the outdoor environment.

The study also pointed to individual space and personal control as strongly connected to perceived productivity in better open offices. That includes access to enough workspace, storage, the ability to influence air, temperature, or lighting, and more freedom to adapt the immediate work setting.

That makes the distinction clearer. A better open office is not simply an open office with a nicer finish. It is an open office where more of the key work conditions actually function at the same time.

Why is this more useful than debating open office as a concept?

Because organisations otherwise risk making decisions at far too broad a level. If the question stays limited to whether open offices are good or bad, the real drivers of workplace performance are missed.

The study points to a more useful level of analysis. The questions should be about how much noise and interruption the environment creates, how much individual space people actually have, how easily they can get privacy when work demands it, how daylight and views are distributed, and how much control employees have over their immediate surroundings.

Only when those questions are answered can an office concept be judged in a credible way.

How should organisations use this kind of research in practice?

The first step is to separate concept from work conditions. An open office is not, by itself, a decision base. The decision base has to show which kinds of work need support, which disturbances are most costly, and which workplace qualities need to be prioritised.

The second step is to measure the right things. If the organisation only discusses density, desk counts, or general satisfaction, the analysis stays too blunt. It also needs to include noise, privacy, daylight, individual space, storage, control, and actual work patterns.

The third step is to treat open offices as a system question. When collaboration, focus, recovery, and access to the right support settings all need to work at the same time, one generic layout principle is not enough. A more precise workplace analysis is needed.

Which questions should you answer before locking an open office design?

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

• Where do the most costly disturbances occur in the current workplace?
• How much privacy do different roles need each week, and in which situations?
• Do people have enough individual space, storage, and control over their immediate work setting?
• How are daylight, views, and outdoor connection distributed in practice?
• Is the office designed around real work patterns or around a generic idea of openness?

Those questions improve the analysis because they move the discussion away from office labels and toward the real function of the work environment.

Source

Source supporting this article: Buildings, “Differences in Occupants Satisfaction and Perceived Productivity in High- and Low-Performance Offices”, published 2019-08-30. URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings9090199.