Office Pods and Privacy Booths: A Quiet Room Without the Building Work

Every office I have worked in had the same argument about the same room. There was one quiet room, it was permanently booked, and the sensitive conversations happened in a stairwell. Office privacy pods exist because building a second room is slow, expensive and needs a landlord's permission. A booth needs a pallet delivery and a spot on the floor.

What an office privacy pod actually is

Two very different things get called a pod. One is a sealed box with a door, a roof, a fan and a light, closer to a phone box than a piece of furniture. The other is a high-backed seating booth: upholstered panels around a bench or two, open at the top, that gives a conversation somewhere to sit and takes the edge off the noise around it. We sell the second kind, and I would rather say so plainly than let the word pod do the selling.

The Brixworth fully enclosed acoustic booth wraps the seating on every side, seats two, four or six, and stands 133.5cm tall to the top of the panel. Fully enclosed means the sides, not a roof. The Brixworth booth with a table puts a 60cm deep worktop in the middle so it becomes somewhere to work rather than somewhere to talk. Both are made in the UK, both come in 48 fabrics on a black or white frame, and both are 249cm deep from front to back, which is the first number to check against your floor.

The money, honestly

A stud-wall meeting room is a quote, a wait, and a conversation with the landlord about putting it back when you leave. I am not going to put a number on it, because I do not know your building and anyone who does put a number on it is guessing. A booth is on the page. The fully enclosed Brixworth runs from £1,476 ex VAT for a two-seater to £3,011 for a six-seater, fabric included. The version with the table runs from £1,600 to £3,258. The frame is guaranteed for ten years and the fabric and foam for five.

That puts every one of them in office furniture over £1,000, and it belongs there. It is not a cheap purchase. It is a cheap room.

Power, screens and air

The questions people ask about sealed pods, where the power comes in, how it breathes, what happens to the light, mostly do not apply to an open-topped booth. It breathes because the office does. It is lit because the office is. Power comes from wherever it already is: put the booth beside a wall socket or a floor box and run the lead along the base. Screens are the one thing worth planning. The Brixworth booth monitor bracket is £24 and holds a monitor inside the booth at eye level, so the table stays clear for laptops and coffee and a video call does not mean four people crouched round one screen.

If you are buying a sealed pod from someone else, and there are good ones, ask three things before you sign:

• Where the fan draws its air from, and how loud it is with the door shut. Quiet is the whole product.

• Whether the power is a plug or a wired feed. One of those needs an electrician.

• Whether your building treats it as furniture or as a structure. That decides who has to approve it, and how long that takes.

Where to park one

Against a wall, not in the middle of the floor. The open side facing away from the main walkway, so the person inside is not the first thing everyone sees. Away from the kitchen, because a booth softens noise rather than stopping it and a kettle is a kettle. Two-seaters earn their keep near the desks, where the phone calls are. Fours and sixes belong in the breakout space, where the ad hoc meetings are. And if the wall behind it is bare, a couple of acoustic panels on it do more for the booth than the booth does for itself.

The full set, open, benched and enclosed, is in office pods and privacy booths. They are delivered direct from the maker, and if you would rather it arrived built and was put where you point, installation is priced on the page and picked at checkout like anything else. The Brixworth frame sits in office furniture with a 10 year guarantee alongside the desks that will outlast the lease. Which, for a quiet room, is rather the idea.