The office is rarely the sole cause of chronic work-related stress. It cannot fix poor management, excessive workloads, a lack of control over one’s work or a culture of round-the-clock availability. But every day, it can add dozens of small burdens to an employee’s load. Or, on the contrary, take some of them away.
There are offices you leave feeling exhausted, even though you have spent the entire day sitting at a desk. And it is not even about the number of meetings.
For eight hours, someone behind you has been talking on Teams. A phone has been ringing three desks away. There were no free meeting rooms, so a confidential conversation took place next to the coffee machine. Every attempt to focus ended with another “got a minute?”. And when there was finally a moment for a break, the only place away from the workstation was the kitchen, where another team happened to be holding a meeting.
None of these problems sounds particularly dramatic on its own. And that is exactly why they are so easy to ignore.
Good office furniture will not solve burnout. But it can create an environment where people do not have to spend eight hours fighting the space as well.
And that is about much more than a comfortable chair.
Spatial stress is deceptive because we quickly stop noticing it.
Noise becomes “just what an open-plan office is like”. Lack of privacy becomes “that’s simply how we work here”. Constantly searching for an available room becomes part of the day. Wearing headphones from morning until evening becomes a personal way of coping with the interior. The body, however, continues to register all of those stimuli.
When designing an office, it is therefore worth looking beyond square metres and workstation counts, and considering the number of small decisions an employee has to make every day.
- Where can I make a call without being disturbed?
- Where can I read a document without listening to someone else’s conversation?
- Is there somewhere I can have a quick meeting without booking a room?
- Can I leave my desk for ten minutes and still stay in the office?
- Is there a place where, for a moment, nothing is expected of me?
The more often the answer is “no”, the more energy is consumed simply by functioning in the workplace.
What wears us down most is the lack of choice
The debate over whether open plan, private offices or hybrid working is best often overlooks the most important issue.
Nobody needs exactly the same thing all day long.
At 9 a.m., an employee may want to talk to the team. At 11 a.m., they need complete concentration. After lunch, they have a difficult call. Then half an hour of laptop work away from their desk. At the end of the day, a short one-to-one meeting.
If the office offers only one type of place for all of these situations – a desk in an open-plan space – the user spends the entire day adapting themselves to the interior.
It should be the other way round.
A well-designed office offers different levels of contact with other people. From open collaboration, through semi-private conversation, to focus and a moment of quiet.
This is where furniture begins to matter.
The FRAME collection makes it possible to create smaller working environments within one space – using seating, tables, mobile screens and modules with media ports. Its compact elements can create temporary separation without the need to build another room.
That is an important difference. An employee does not have to leave the office to step out of the open plan for a while.
Silence is not a luxury for introverts
One of the most persistent workplace stressors is sound over which the user has no control.
It is not just about volume. Conversations are particularly demanding because the brain automatically tries to follow them. A phone call. A video meeting. Laughter a few desks away. A discussion by the printer. Each stimulus pulls attention away for a moment. Then the mind has to return to the task.
And do it again.
And again.
That is why acoustics should not be treated as the final layer of a project – something to be “added later”.
QUIET is a system of upholstered acoustic partitions designed for coworking environments and open office spaces. The screens can be joined at different angles to create local barriers wherever calmer working conditions are needed.
Even more interesting is integrating acoustic performance directly into the furniture itself. NEBULA is available with a system of screens mounted on sofas and armchairs. Instead of a separate partition and a separate seat, the furniture itself creates a place whose form already communicates: you can slow down here.
It does not have to be library-level silence.
Sometimes it is enough not to hear every word being spoken five metres away.
Recovery does not begin when you leave the office
For a long time, the office rest area was designed almost like a bonus.
A coffee machine, two poufs, perhaps a games console. The space was supposed to look less formal than the rest of the office and therefore somehow become a place for recovery automatically.
It did not always work.
For someone to genuinely change pace for a moment, they need a physical signal that they have entered a different kind of space. A different body position. Softer materials. Less exposure to movement. Sometimes simply placing an armchair sideways to the main circulation route instead of facing dozens of workstations.
That is why a regeneration zone should differ from the workstation not through decoration, but through the way it is used.
The PART collection can be used to create larger arrangements of soft seating as well as individual places to rest. The elements can be combined in different configurations, while optional castors make them easier to move. In practice, this means the zone does not have to be permanently “drawn” in one place.
EPIC can create an even more individual setting. Its high backrest visually separates the user from their surroundings, while the profiled form supports the lumbar area. The armchair can become a place for ten minutes of quiet, but just as easily for a calm one-to-one conversation.
This matters: rest in the office does not have to mean a daybed or a meditation room.
Sometimes it simply means being able to sit somewhere else.
Your spine has deadlines too
When we talk about stress, it is easy to separate mental strain from physical comfort. In reality, eight hours in an uncomfortable position is another burden the body has to deal with.
A poorly selected seat does not cause burnout. But constantly correcting your posture, back tension or being unable to change the way you sit certainly does not help on a demanding day.
That is why ergonomics should be understood more broadly than the parameters of a computer workstation.
In a meeting room, comfortable support matters during an hour-long conversation. In reception, it is about being able to sit down and stand up easily. In a lounge, it is the freedom to change position. In a focus zone, it is also the feeling of being sheltered.
A well-designed office does not offer one “correct” posture.
It lets the body move.
Desk. Meeting room. Armchair. High table. Sofa. A short walk to a quieter zone.
Changing place can itself become part of a healthy working rhythm.
Constant exposure is stressful too
In an open-plan office, people are almost always visible.
Someone walks past. Someone looks over your shoulder. Someone comes over with a question because, if you are sitting at your desk, apparently you can be interrupted.
The paradox is that an employee can be surrounded by people and still spend the whole day craving a few minutes of privacy.
The point is not to lock everyone inside individual booths.
The point is gradation.
An open place for collaboration. A semi-open one for a calm conversation. A sheltered one for concentration. A soft one for a break.
FRAME and NEBULA allow designers to create these different levels of privacy with furniture rather than walls. Upholstered surfaces, tall elements and mobile screens can form a small enclave without closing off the entire office.
For the employee, that means something even more important: the ability to decide how much of the surrounding environment they want to engage with at a given moment.
A sense of choice is one of the most underestimated dimensions of comfort.
A focus zone should not feel like punishment
There is another extreme.
A company notices the noise problem and creates a “quiet zone”: a small, dark room at the end of the corridor that feels slightly like being sent to detention.
That is not the point.
A place for concentration should be an attractive alternative, not an emergency solution.
It needs good light, comfortable seating, somewhere to put a laptop, access to power and a sense that a person can genuinely spend part of the day there. It should be sheltered enough to reduce stimuli, but not necessarily completely cut off from the team.
Here, furniture can often matter more than floor area.
A well-positioned FRAME, a QUIET screen or a NEBULA configuration with taller elements can create a micro-space where there is simply no room for another enclosed meeting room.
The office does not gain more square metres.
It gains more ways of using them.
Fewer stimuli do not mean a more boring office
Reducing spatial stress does not require turning the interior into a beige silence.
Colour itself is not the problem. The problem is a lack of hierarchy.
If every zone is equally visually loud, equally open and equally intense, the user has nowhere to change pace.
The design can therefore differentiate atmosphere deliberately.
A high-energy collaboration zone can use stronger accents. A concentration area – a calmer palette and more enveloping forms. A lounge – softer materials, a lower seating position and a different relationship between pieces of furniture.
A modern, architectural interior is not at odds with wellbeing.
Quite the opposite.
Aesthetics can help the brain recognise: we work together here, we focus here, and here we can let go for a moment.
The most expensive piece of furniture is the one nobody uses
Wellbeing zones look excellent in design presentations.
Less so when they remain empty after the office opens.
Why?
Sometimes they are placed in the middle of a busy open-plan office. Sometimes users feel everyone can see them “taking a break”. Sometimes the furniture looks impressive but is uncomfortable. Sometimes a phone call in the quiet zone can be heard more clearly than one made at a desk.
That is why it is worth returning to the project a few months later and simply observing.
- Where do people actually sit?
- Which places do they avoid?
- Where do conversations happen even though they were never planned to happen there?
- Have the armchairs been moved?
- Have users started moving plants or poufs themselves to shield themselves from circulation?
These behaviours are not user error.
They are feedback from the space.
The office will not prevent burnout. But it can stop adding to it
This is the most important caveat.
Burnout is not caused by the wrong sofa. It will not disappear after acoustic panels are installed or a beautiful relaxation area is created.
If the real problem is permanent overload, lack of control over work, toxic management or a culture in which employees are expected to be constantly available, even the best interior design will not disguise it.
Nor should it try.
But the space can reduce the burdens it genuinely has influence over: noise, lack of privacy, chaos, uncomfortable postures, constant exposure, lack of a place to focus and lack of a place for brief recovery.
They may seem like small things.
Except they happen eight hours a day.
A good office does not promise that employees will never feel stressed.
It designs the environment so that, at the very least, they do not have to be stressed by the office itself.
And that is a good place to start.
FAQ
Can office furniture prevent burnout?
Not on its own. Burnout is associated with chronic work-related stress and requires organisational action above all. A well-designed office can, however, reduce some everyday stressors – including noise, lack of privacy, physical discomfort and the lack of suitable places for focused work and recovery.
How can furniture reduce stress in the office?
Furniture can define zones for different activities, improve acoustics, provide greater privacy and make it easier to change position and place during the working day. This allows employees to choose an environment that suits the task instead of spending the entire day working in the same conditions.
Which KLEIBER furniture works well in quiet zones?
It is worth considering FRAME, which can create smaller work settings with mobile shielding elements, NEBULA with its system of screens, and QUIET upholstered acoustic partitions.
How should a regeneration zone in an office be designed?
It should clearly differ from a standard workstation in terms of seating position, materials, level of privacy and intensity of stimuli. Modular PART seating works well in these spaces, as do the more enveloping EPIC and NEBULA armchairs and sofas.
Should an office really have a rest area?
Yes, provided it reflects the way the team actually works. It does not have to be used exclusively for “relaxation”. It can give people the opportunity to change position, take a short break from the screen, have a less formal conversation or work in a calmer setting for a while.
Why can having a choice of workplace reduce stress?
Different tasks require different conditions. A team conversation needs a different environment from analysing a document or making a difficult call. Access to several types of zones reduces the need to improvise and gives the user greater control over their surroundings.
How can noise in an open-plan office be reduced without building walls?
Upholstered furniture with high backrests, mobile screens and acoustic partitions can all help. They allow smaller quiet zones to be created and limit sound propagation without permanently rebuilding the office. We explore practical solutions in “How to avoid noise in open spaces?”.
Which KLEIBER collections are worth considering for a wellbeing-oriented office?
For focus zones and areas where reducing stimuli matters, consider FRAME, NEBULA and QUIET. For rest areas and less formal conversations, PART and EPIC work particularly well. The most important thing, however, is to match each piece of furniture to a specific use scenario rather than create one universal “wellbeing zone”.
Read also
– Well of your employees — how to take care of comfort in the office?
– How to design office work zones that support meetings, focus and rest?
– Where does the noise end and the work begin? Focus zone design in open-plan offices
– The Architecture of the Senses. How to Design an Office for Neurodiverse Teams?
