Poor acoustic design is costing UK Plc £40 billion a year

Oscar Acoustics recently hosted a roundtable at dMFK Architects' London offices in association with RIBA to discuss why construction treats acoustics as an add-on, and what specifiers and contractors can do about it.

Acoustics is not a snagging issue. It is a foundational design element, influencing how people work, feel and behave in a space. When it is left until late in the design and build process, or cut from the budget entirely, the consequences are measurable and expensive. Oscar Acoustics' 2026 research, surveying 2,000 UK office employees, puts the issue in context; every day, workers lose 26 minutes of productive time due to noise. For a 100-person business, that is approximately 11,000 lost working hours a year: the equivalent of losing six full-time members of staff. Across the wider economy, poor acoustics cost UK businesses an estimated £40 billion in lost productivity each year.

Despite this, less than one in ten employers (8%) have installed acoustic treatment in the last two years. And only one in seven architects (14%) consider sound at RIBA Plan of Work Stages 0 to 2.

Layout before finishes

At the roundtable, Julian de Metz, founding director of dMFK Architects, outlined how his practice approaches acoustic design. His method is to shade floor plans across different acoustic zones before making any surface decisions; identifying distinct areas for focused work, collaboration and general activity. He points out that to enable comfortable listening, learning and focused working, "you have got to lay the space out right."

When spatial layout is resolved early, acoustic finishes perform as designed. Specifiers should integrate acoustic products from the start. Sound expert Julian Treasure, a five-time TED speaker, made the human case: "Sound changes our physiology, our heart rate, breathing, hormone secretions; it changes our emotions, how we feel. It changes how well we can think." This happens before people consciously register the acoustic environment. In knowledge work settings, it matters from the moment someone walks in.

The commercial reality

Ben Hancock, Managing Director of Oscar Acoustics, put the business case clearly: "People are already paying for the acoustic problem and they don't realise it. If you multiply 26 minutes a day over a team of 50 people, that is 150 weeks of lost productivity a year. There is no other part of the business where a finance director would be happy with those sorts of losses."

Almost half (45%) of office workers say they would seek new work due to excessive noise. As Charlie Green, CEO of Workspace Group, put it: "Nobody says 'I'm leaving because the acoustics are bad', but they will be making a decision with that informing their choice. There's a commercial consequence to getting it wrong."

Inclusive design isn’t a niche

Acoustic inclusivity is no longer a niche concern. Research from Sownd Affects shows 60% of UK adults are noise-sensitive; some 30 million people. That group includes those with neurodivergent conditions, individuals with hearing loss and many others for whom a poorly designed acoustic environment is not just uncomfortable but genuinely exclusionary.

Marion Marincat, founder of Sownd Affects, put seven years of research into creating Sownd Certification. It’s the world's first accreditation for audio-inclusive spaces, independently validated by the ISVR at the University of Southampton. It evaluates post-occupancy results and gives specifiers a clear framework to reference in a brief. "There was no standard for acoustic comfort," he said. "It was down to the architect or designer to decide."

Sownd Certification removes the guesswork. Oscar Acoustics' SonaSpray acoustic finishes and Oscar Elite acoustic plaster automatically qualify for Bronze Sownd Certification upon installation, making it easy for project teams to specify and verify acoustic performance.

From cost line to return on investment

Julian Treasure refers to "return on sound": the measurable gain in productivity, retention and wellbeing that well-designed acoustic environments deliver. That framing matters for quantity surveyors and contractors who face pressure to cut acoustic treatments.

The evidence is there. The standard exists. The only thing left is to put acoustics in the brief where it belongs: at the beginning. Sownd Certification gives architects, interior designers, acoustic consultants, contractors and quantity surveyors a shared, recognised standard to work towards. To find out more, visit oscar-acoustics.com/sownd-certification