Open Office Survival: Masking Conversation Without Headphone Fatigue
Short answer: The problem is speech you can understand. What held up in a real office is a plain, steady sound at a modest level that makes nearby words harder to make out. It doesn't have to be loud, and nicer-sounding options did worse.
| Sound | Covers nearby speech? | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Pink or white noise | Yes | Plain and steady. This kind did best in the office study below. |
| Brown noise | Partly | Pleasant, but weak in the range where speech is clearest |
| Water and nature sounds | Less well | Rated worse than plain noise by the office workers |
| Music | Poorly | Brings its own things to follow |
| Generated ambient sound | Partly | Better for a room that is already fairly quiet |
Why speech is the problem
A large review of noise and performance found that speech does more damage than any other kind of noise. A review of 65 reading studies found the same for reading. A colleague's phone call is harder to ignore than a louder air conditioner, because one of them has words in it.
So the aim is not to make the office quiet. The aim is to make the words stop being words.
What a real office test found
In a Finnish experiment, 77 people in an open-plan office spent 18 weeks with different masking sounds played through the room: an ordinary steady noise and four sounds based on running water. I expected the water sounds to win. They didn't. None was rated better than the plain noise, and people reported being disturbed more by colleagues' speech while the water sounds were on.
That study played sound through the whole room. What follows is my reading of how to use it at one desk. It is not something the study tested.
At your desk
- Choose steady over pretty. Pink noise is the usual starting point.
- Set the volume just high enough that nearby words blur. You don't have to drown the voices.
- Closed or noise-cancelling headphones lower the volume you need, which matters over a full day.
- If your ears feel tired by mid-afternoon, it is too loud.
Where my own project fits
Ambient Sound Online is generated ambient sound. That puts it closer to the water sounds in that study than to plain noise, so by that evidence it is not the strongest cover for speech. I use it when the room is fairly quiet and silence is the problem. In a loud office I would start with pink noise and switch when things calm down.
Sources
- Hongisto and colleagues, 2017: water-based masking sounds in an open-plan office, 18-week experiment
- Szalma and Hancock, 2011: review of noise and human performance
- Vasilev, Kirkby and Angele, 2018: review of 65 studies on background sound and reading
Try it: when the office goes quiet and noise starts to feel like too much, switch to Ocean. It is free and starts in one click, with no account.
Open Ocean, free