Room acoustic target values in offices: a global review

This work presents a global analysis of national regulations and guidance documents regarding indoor acoustic conditions in office environments. The authors collected data from over 30 countries across six continents through an extensive review, supported and validated by expert consultation. Considering five recurrent space types, i.e., single-worker rooms, shared office rooms, open-plan offices, meeting rooms, and audio/video rooms, allowed for a consistent comparison among the acoustic requirements worldwide. The results reveal that conventional metrics, such as reverberation time and background noise level, remain the most widely adopted for setting acoustic targets across all office types. Conversely, advanced speech privacy and spatial acoustic descriptors defined in the ISO 3382-3, such as distraction distance and speech spatial decay rate, are explicitly integrated into national regulations in only a few countries. Findings indicate a significant gap between the current legislative framework and scientific evidence on speech privacy, underscoring the need for updated building codes to improve workers’ comfort and well-being.