FocusPod Solo™
FocusPod Solo Plus™
FocusPod Duo™
FocusPod Team™
FocusPod Meet™
FocusPod Max™Office Pods and the Open-Plan Problem
Fitout strategy
Open plan made work visible. Not workable.
The floor plan was never the problem. The problem is that nothing replaced the door it removed.
Open-plan layouts improved visibility and collaboration and removed the one thing every office needs: somewhere to close a door. Acoustic pods put that back without rebuilding the floor — a Class A booth reduces speech by around 30 dB, installs in a morning, needs no trades or approvals, and comes with you at the end of the lease.
What open plan got right, and what it left out
Open plan works. Sightlines, adjacency, the ability to ask a question without booking a room — none of that is nostalgia for cubicles.
What it removed was the door, and nothing replaced it. Every floor still needs somewhere to take a client call, run a performance review, join a video meeting or concentrate for ninety minutes. Removing the walls did not remove those needs, it just left them without a home.
The result is the pattern every office manager knows: six-person meeting rooms booked for one-person calls, difficult conversations happening in stairwells, and people leaving the building to have a private phone call.
Why the usual fixes only go so far
| Fix | What it solves | What it leaves |
|---|---|---|
| Acoustic panels | Reverberation. The room feels less harsh | Conversations still carry. Absorption is not isolation |
| Desk screens | Visual distraction | A screen does not contain a phone call |
| Headphones | The wearer hearing the room | The room hearing the wearer — which is the actual problem |
| More meeting rooms | Meetings | Cost, weeks of construction, and make-good at lease end |
| An enclosure | Removes the conversation from the floor | Nothing else on this list does that |
What actually changes on a floor
Meeting rooms come back. The most immediate effect is not quieter desks, it is that the bookable rooms stop being occupied by one person on a video call. Two phone booths frequently free up more meeting capacity than adding a room would.
Difficult conversations get a home. Performance reviews, HR discussions and candidate interviews stop happening in whichever corner is free.
The ambient level drops. Not because the room is treated, but because the loudest recurring source — someone on a call — is no longer on the floor.
Where they belong on the plan
Beside the noise, not away from it. The instinct is to put a booth in the quiet corner with spare floor. People will not cross an office to take a call, so site it next to the sales, recruitment or client-facing desks even though that feels counterintuitive.
Two, not one. People stop trying after finding a booth occupied twice. One per fifteen people covers normal call volumes, one per eight to ten for client-facing teams.
Mind the sightlines. A glazed door facing a bank of desks gets used less, because people feel watched. Angle it or specify frosted glazing.
Without rebuilding anything
This is the part that makes it practical rather than a fitout project. A pod is freestanding furniture: nothing fixed to the floor, walls or ceiling, one standard power point, no electrician, no council consent, no landlord consent in most leases.
It arrives flat-packed and is working the same morning. And at the end of the lease it leaves with you, which a built room does not — that has to be demolished and made good, at a cost that never appeared on the original quote.
The range
Solo
Calls and deep focus. Fits where a desk would go.
- Exterior
- 1080 × 1000 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 942 × 960 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~1.0 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
Solo Plus
One person with room to move. Dual monitors, long sessions.
- Exterior
- 1600 × 1375 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 1462 × 1335 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~2.2 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
Duo
Two-person calls, pair work and one-to-ones.
- Exterior
- 1600 × 1375 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 1462 × 1335 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~2.2 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
Team
Two people, long and narrow. Sits against a wall where a square pod cannot.
- Exterior
- 2300 × 966 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 2162 × 926 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~2.2 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
Meet
A real meeting room. Client meetings and video calls.
- Exterior
- 2300 × 1785 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 2162 × 1745 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~4.1 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
Max
Boardroom and workshops without building a boardroom.
- Exterior
- 2600 × 2605 × 2338 mm
- Interior
- 2462 × 2565 × 2146 mm
- Floor
- ~6.77 m²
- Acoustic
- Up to 30 dB · Class A
What customers say
Named, with permission★★★★★
“We added a FocusPod Solo because private phone calls were becoming difficult in our open-plan office. It gets used constantly for client calls, Zoom meetings and focused work. It looks professional, takes up very little space and has freed up our meeting rooms for larger groups.”
Emily Carter
Harbour Lane Finance
★★★★★
“We originally purchased one FocusPod Solo to see how much use it would get. Within the first week, staff were booking it throughout the day. It has given everyone a quiet place to take calls without interrupting the rest of the office.”
Daniel Brooks
Westbridge Property Group
★★★★★
“The Solo has been a great addition to our studio. We have a collaborative workspace, which is excellent most of the time, but it can be difficult when someone needs privacy or complete concentration. The pod solves that problem without taking over the room.”
Sarah Mitchell
Coastline Creative
Common questions
Are open-plan offices bad for productivity?
Not inherently. Open plan works for visibility and collaboration. What it removed was somewhere to close a door, and the needs that door served — private calls, difficult conversations, sustained concentration — did not go away with it.
How do you fix noise in an open-plan office?
Absorption reduces reverberation and makes the space less tiring. Sound masking reduces distant distraction. But only an enclosure removes a conversation from the floor, which is why booths address the problem the other fixes manage.
Do office pods actually reduce office noise?
They remove the loudest recurring source rather than treating the room. The most immediate effect on most floors is that bookable meeting rooms stop being occupied by one person on a video call.
Do office pods require building work?
No. A pod is freestanding furniture — nothing fixed to the floor, walls or ceiling, running from one standard power point. No electrician, no council consent, and in most leases no landlord consent.
How many pods does an open-plan floor need?
One per fifteen people for normal call volumes, one per eight to ten for sales or client-facing teams. Two is a sensible minimum, because people stop trying after finding a single booth occupied twice.
Send us the floor plan.
Mark where the calls happen and roughly how many people sit there. We will tell you how many pods, which models, and where they should go.