Breakout Spaces: Why the Kettle Corner Earns Its Keep

An office breakout area is the first thing cut when space is tight and the last thing anybody regrets putting back. It looks like the least productive corner of the building. It is quietly one of the most useful, and the business case for it is more solid than the phrase kettle corner suggests.

What actually happens there

Three things, mostly. The first is the short conversation that would otherwise be a meeting. Two people stand up, walk ten feet, sort something out in four minutes and go back to their desks. Without somewhere to go, that same conversation either happens across a desk while both of them are half looking at screens, or it turns into a calendar invite for Thursday.

The second is people actually taking a lunch break. Somewhere that is not your desk is the only thing that reliably gets people away from their keyboard, and a team that eats at its desks every day is a team that is quietly tired by Thursday afternoon.

The third is the informal bit of induction that nobody plans. New starters learn most of what they need from overhearing and asking. That happens in the corner with the kettle, not in the handbook.

Round tables, and why the shape matters

A round table has no head. That sounds like a small thing and it changes the conversation. Nobody sits at the end, nobody presides, and everybody can see everybody without turning. For a four minute problem-solving chat that is exactly right.

Size is easy to get wrong in the ambitious direction. An Impulse round table runs from 60cm to 120cm across. A 60cm table takes two people and a couple of mugs, 80cm takes three at a squeeze, and 120cm seats four comfortably with room for laptops. Anything bigger stops being a breakout table and becomes a meeting table that people book. The round meeting tables are gathered on one page if you want to compare the sizes side by side.

That last point is worth guarding. The moment a breakout table needs booking, it stops doing the job it was bought for.

Furniture that survives both jobs

A breakout space takes more abuse than anywhere else in the building. Coffee, lunch, people perching on the edge of things, a Friday afternoon that runs on. Buy accordingly.

Soft seating stools are the workhorse here because they get moved constantly. A Harlestone round stool weighs 6kg to 12kg depending on size, so it gets dragged about without complaint, and it is rated between 125kg and 200kg, which matters when somebody sits on two of them pushed together.

The specification to check is recommended usage. That stool is rated for around two hours at a time, which is honest and exactly right for a breakout space. It is not a task chair and nobody should be working a full day on one. Furniture bought for the wrong duration is how a nice breakout corner turns into a bad overflow office.

If people are working in the breakout area all day, you have not got a breakout area. You have got a shortage of desks.

Making it feel separate

The best breakout spaces feel like a different room even when they are not. A rug, a change of floor finish, a run of tall storage as a divider, or simply turning the seating away from the desks. Anything that says you have arrived somewhere.

Soft furnishing does a second job here, which is soaking up noise. A hard-floored corner with a laminate table in an open office makes every conversation in it public, and people stop having them. Upholstered stools, a fabric screen and something on the floor take the edge off enough for a private word to stay private.

If you are planning one, start with the breakout tables and the soft seating range, and buy for a corner rather than a room. Most offices need less space for this than they think and simply need to stop putting a desk in it.