What is a sound booth and can you use one in an office?

Yes, you can use a sound booth in an office to give staff a separate space for calls, video meetings and focused work. Choose a booth designed for workplace conversations rather than assuming a recording booth serves the same purpose; an acoustic enclosure reduces noise transfer but does not guarantee silence or prevent every conversation from being overheard.

What is a sound booth and can you use one in an office?

A sound booth is an enclosure used to control the acoustic environment around an activity. In an office, that activity is usually speech: a telephone conversation, a video call or a meeting that needs separation from surrounding desks.

For example, the Office Phone Booth Folio is described as a one-person space for private calls, Zoom meetings and focus. That workplace purpose matters more than the broad label attached to the enclosure.

Choose an office sound booth for workplace speech, not simply because a product is described as soundproof. Recording, meeting and individual-call requirements are not interchangeable.

Office requirement	What the booth needs to support	What not to assume
Individual telephone calls	Separation between the caller and nearby desks	That no speech will be audible outside
Video meetings	The person attending and their working equipment	That a booth includes conferencing equipment
Face-to-face discussions	Everyone physically attending	That a single-person booth doubles as a meeting room
Focused work	The working activity, not just somewhere to stand	That every phone booth suits extended desk work

Why this matters

An open-plan office combines activities that make different demands on the same space. Someone speaking to a customer creates sound; someone reviewing a document wants fewer interruptions. Moving the conversation into an enclosure addresses a different problem from asking everyone to speak more quietly.

A booth gives you another type of workspace, not a complete acoustic solution for the whole floor. Its benefit depends on whether staff can use it for the activity that is causing disruption.

Start with a practical brief: name the task, identify who needs the space and explain what is currently difficult. That keeps the decision tied to work rather than furniture appearance.

Office booths and recording booths serve different purposes

An office booth supports conversations and work within a shared workplace. A recording booth supports capturing audio, where the sound reaching a microphone is central to the result. Both involve acoustics, but the intended outcome differs.

For office calls, you need to consider the person inside and colleagues outside. For recorded narration, you also need to judge what the microphone captures, including reflections within the enclosure. A quiet-feeling space is not automatically a recording-ready space.

Option	Best for	Main advantage	Main limitation
Office phone booth	Individual work calls	Separates the caller from the shared desk area	Does not provide space for a face-to-face team meeting
Office meeting booth	Small-group conversations	Gives several colleagues an enclosed meeting space	Does not serve separate simultaneous calls
Recording booth	Capturing spoken audio	Focuses the brief on the recorded sound	Recording suitability does not establish workplace suitability
Acoustic wall treatment	Reducing reflections in a room	Addresses sound within the treated space	Does not create an enclosed private workspace

Do not choose between these options on the word acoustic alone. Match the enclosure to the activity first, then examine its stated performance and configuration.

Single-person booths: best for individual calls

A single-person booth fits the brief when one colleague needs somewhere separate to speak. The other participants can be elsewhere on the telephone or video call; they do not increase the number of people who need to fit inside.

Office Phone Booth Folio is intended for one person taking private calls, joining Zoom meetings or focusing. Its clear advantage is that individual-use brief. Its limitation is equally clear: it is not a substitute for a booth intended for colleagues meeting face to face.

Before choosing an individual booth, describe what you will do inside. A quick telephone conversation and a laptop-based presentation require different working arrangements, even though both involve one person.

Soundbox Store office phone booths are best for businesses seeking a separate space for individual workplace calls. Keep the recommendation tied to that purpose rather than treating every enclosure as a general meeting room.

Meeting booths: 2-person, 2–4-person and 6-person options

Meeting booths address conversations involving people in the same physical space. Count those attendees before considering the total number of remote participants or the size of the department that will share the booth.

The following products have different stated capacities. These are use-case comparisons, not a ranking of acoustic performance; the supplied product descriptions do not establish a model-by-model performance hierarchy.

Product	Stated capacity	Best for	Advantage	Limitation
Office Phone Booth Quell - 2 Person	2 people	Face-to-face conversations between colleagues	Designed around a two-person meeting	Not intended as a larger team meeting space
Folio Meeting Booth - 2-4 Person	2–4 people	Small-team collaboration	Accommodates a broader small-group brief	Does not provide separate spaces for individual callers
Meeting Booth Quell - 6 Person	6 people	Meetings involving more colleagues	Designed for a larger in-person group	Remains a shared meeting space, not several independent booths

A 2-person booth and a 6-person booth solve different occupancy requirements. Neither is automatically better because it accommodates more people. Choose around the meetings you need to support, rather than the largest group you can imagine.

Soundbox Store offers both office phone booths and meeting booths. The benefit is a choice of workplace formats; the trade-off is that you still need to select the right format for your actual demand.

Why sound booth suitability varies

The same enclosure does not answer every office brief. These factors determine whether the format matches your work:

• Activity: Calls, focused work and in-person meetings require different uses of the interior.
• Occupancy: Count everyone physically inside, rather than everyone invited remotely.
• Acoustic objective: Reducing incoming distraction differs from reducing outgoing speech.
• Working arrangement: Establish whether you need to stand, sit, use a laptop or discuss work together.
• Shared demand: Several individual callers need separate spaces, not merely more seats within one enclosure.
• Surrounding noise: Judge the booth in relation to the office environment where it will be used.

Write these requirements in ordinary language. A brief such as individual customer calls beside a shared desk area is more useful than a request for the quietest booth without any explanation of the activity.

Separate sound isolation from sound absorption

Sound isolation concerns sound passing between spaces. Sound absorption concerns sound reflections within a space. An office can need both, but improving one does not automatically solve the other.

Absorptive finishes can reduce reflections without enclosing a conversation. Conversely, an enclosure intended to reduce sound transfer still needs to suit the conversation taking place inside. A room that sounds less echoey is not necessarily a room that keeps speech private.

Visual privacy is another separate question. Being out of sight does not establish acoustic separation, just as being behind a transparent panel does not tell you how much speech passes through it.

When discussing a booth, explain which outcome matters: fewer distractions reaching the user, less speech reaching colleagues, or a better environment for a call. Avoid combining these outcomes into an unsupported promise of complete silence.

Decide whether the problem belongs to a person or a room

An enclosure addresses a defined activity within the workplace. Room-level acoustic changes address the shared environment. Before choosing either, identify where the unwanted sound starts and where it causes difficulty.

If the issue concerns sound passing through an existing room boundary, soundproof wall lining systems concern the wall construction rather than a separate enclosed workspace. That distinction changes the brief: improving a room boundary and providing somewhere for a colleague to take a call are different projects.

If a caller needs separation from nearby desks, a workplace booth addresses that individual activity. If the wider room is reverberant, putting the caller inside a booth does not treat all the remaining reflective surfaces.

Consider the direction of the problem as well. Noise disturbing someone inside and speech disturbing colleagues outside are related questions, but neither should disappear from the brief. Describe both where both matter.

Assess an office sound booth around real work

Use a task-led assessment rather than relying on the appearance of an enclosure. You are checking whether the proposed space supports your work, not trying to recreate a laboratory test.

1. Name the activity. Specify individual calls, video participation, focused work or face-to-face discussion. Avoid a brief that simply asks for privacy without describing its purpose.
2. Count physical attendees. Distinguish the people inside from people joining remotely. Keep this number separate from the total team headcount.
3. Describe the working arrangement. Explain what you need to use during the activity. Confirm the selected configuration and what it includes rather than inferring equipment from photographs.
4. Discuss acoustic expectations. State what you want to hear inside and what colleagues should hear outside. Ask the supplier to explain the selected model's stated acoustic performance.
5. Review shared use. Decide how staff will access the space and which activities take priority. An appropriate booth still needs an understandable workplace routine.

Keep the assessment consistent across the options you consider. If one booth is judged during a normal call and another only while empty, you have not compared the working experience on the same basis.

Make the booth useful without turning it into an extra desk

A shared booth needs a clear purpose. If you provide it for calls but allow unrelated activities to occupy it whenever calls arise, the original problem remains unresolved.

Set expectations around the activity rather than imposing arbitrary rules. Explain which conversations belong in the booth, how colleagues indicate that it is occupied and what to do when several people need it at once. These are workplace decisions, not promises about built-in booking features.

For meetings, choose the appropriate capacity rather than treating a smaller enclosure as overflow space. For individual calls, remember that an empty seat inside an occupied meeting booth does not create another independent conversation space.

Review how staff actually use the enclosure after introducing it. Look for mismatches between the brief and the activity: a call space used for group discussions, for example, or a meeting booth occupied by individual callers while groups have nowhere to meet.

FAQ

One last thing

More seats do not mean more independent conversations. A meeting booth accommodating 6 people remains one shared acoustic space; it does not replace separate booths for colleagues taking unrelated calls.

Before choosing a format, ask whether your office needs people to meet together or speak separately. That answer is more useful than choosing the largest enclosure.

Related guides

• What is the difference between a phone booth and a meeting pod?