Oscar Acoustics hosted a round table with RIBA to discuss why construction treats acoustics as an add-on.
Acoustics is not a snagging issue. It is a foundational design element, influencing how people work, feel and behave in a space. When left until late in the design and build process, or cut 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 costs UK businesses an estimated £40bn in lost productivity each year. Despite this, less than one in 10 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 decisions; identifying distinct areas for focused work, collaboration and general activity. He said that to enable comfortable listening, learning and focused working, “you have to lay the space out right”. When spatial layout is resolved early, acoustic finishes perform as designed, so acoustic products should be integrated from the start.
Sound expert Julian Treasure, a fivetime 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.”
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 is 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 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 where it belongs: at the beginning of the brief. Sownd Certification gives architects, designers, consultants, contractors and quantity surveyors a shared, recognised standard to work towards.
oscar-acoustics.com/sownd-certification