The way people work has changed, and the offices designed to support that work have changed with it. Businesses now recognise that a well-designed workplace does more than house a team — it shapes how people feel, how productively they work, and how effectively they collaborate. Understanding the different types of modern office design helps you make informed decisions about the kind of workspace that will genuinely serve your people.
Here are the six most influential approaches to modern office design shaping UK workplaces today, and what each one offers in practice.
1. Biophilic Office Design
Biophilic design brings the natural world into the built environment. In an office context, this means plants, living walls, natural materials such as timber and stone, natural light, water features, and organic textures that reduce the hard, clinical character of a conventional commercial fit-out.
The evidence for its effectiveness is consistent. Access to plants and natural elements reduces cortisol levels, lowers blood pressure, and measurably improves concentration. Even modest interventions — a desk plant, a green wall in the reception, timber accents in the breakout area — create a calmer, more restorative environment. For businesses with teams spending eight or more hours a day in the office, this is not a luxury. It is a meaningful investment in daily wellbeing. See our dedicated guide to biophilic office design for a full breakdown of what it involves and how to specify it effectively.
Best for: any business prioritising wellbeing and staff retention, creative industries, professional services firms wanting to differentiate the client experience.
2. Ergonomic Workspaces
Ergonomic office design is concerned with the physical experience of working — the chairs, desks, screen heights, keyboard positions, and lighting levels that determine whether people end each day comfortable or in pain. Modern ergonomic specification goes beyond compliant task chairs to include height-adjustable sit-stand desks, monitor arms, acoustic screens that reduce visual and auditory distraction, and lighting designed to reduce eye strain over a full working day.
The business case is straightforward. Poor ergonomics generates direct costs through musculoskeletal complaints, sick leave, and lost productivity. Good ergonomic specification reduces those costs and signals to employees that the company takes their physical health seriously — which has a measurable effect on engagement and retention.
Ergonomic design is not a separate discipline from interior design. It should be integrated into the layout and furniture specification from the outset, not retrofitted after the fact.
Best for: all office environments, particularly those with high desk-based workloads, call-heavy roles, or teams working long hours.
3. Activity-Based Working
Activity-based working (ABW) replaces the traditional one-desk-per-person model with a range of different environments, each designed to support a specific type of work activity. Focus desks for concentrated individual work, collaborative tables for team discussion, informal breakout seating for casual conversation, acoustic pods for private calls, and social areas for connection and recharging.
The premise is that different tasks benefit from different physical conditions, and that a single environment cannot optimise for all of them. A developer needs quiet, uninterrupted concentration. A design team needs space to spread out, discuss, and ideate. A client call requires privacy and a professional background. ABW provides genuinely different options rather than asking everyone to do everything in the same place.
It works best in offices where hybrid working means attendance is variable — the range of environments replaces the certainty of an assigned desk with the flexibility of choosing the right setting for each day’s work. Desking layout decisions are central to making ABW function well in practice.
Best for: hybrid teams, knowledge workers, businesses with diverse task types across the team, organisations investing in the office as a genuine productivity tool.
4. Office Pods and Acoustic Booths
Acoustic pods and enclosed booths are one of the fastest-growing elements in commercial office design, and for good reason. They provide genuine acoustic isolation for calls, focused work, and small group meetings — without the cost and permanence of building partitioned rooms.
Glass pods in particular maintain visual connection with the wider office while creating the physical and acoustic separation that makes private work possible. They can be specified in one- to four-person configurations, equipped with power and screens, and positioned wherever the floor plate needs a quiet option.
For open plan offices, acoustic pods are not an optional add-on — they are what makes open plan work for the people who find noise and distraction a genuine barrier to productivity. Without them, those employees simply work better from home, which defeats the purpose of the office.
Best for: open plan offices, hybrid workplaces, any team where calls, video conferencing, or focused work are a significant part of the daily pattern.
5. Resimercial Design
Resimercial design blends residential comfort with commercial functionality. The term describes workplaces that borrow the warmth, texture, and human scale of domestic interiors — sofas, rugs, bookshelves, warm lighting, kitchen tables — and bring them into a professional environment.
The logic is increasingly compelling. If hybrid working means the office must compete with the home for people’s presence, the office needs to offer some of what makes the home comfortable — without sacrificing the professional infrastructure and social energy that makes the office worth the commute. Resimercial design does not mean making the office look like a living room. It means using the design language of comfort and familiarity to create an environment that people genuinely want to spend time in.
Breakout areas with comfortable seating, well-specified kitchens that feel inviting rather than institutional, and social spaces with the warmth and texture of a good cafe are the most common resimercial applications in UK offices.
Best for: businesses competing for talent in hybrid working environments, creative agencies, technology companies, any organisation trying to make the office a destination rather than an obligation.
6. Natural Light and Daylight Design
Natural light is consistently rated as the single most valued feature of a workplace by employees — above flexible hours, on-site gyms, and free food. The practical reasons are clear: daylight regulates circadian rhythms, reduces eye strain, improves mood, and significantly affects the subjective experience of a space. An office with good daylight feels larger, more generous, and more pleasant to spend time in.
Designing for natural light is primarily about layout decisions: positioning workstations adjacent to perimeter glazing rather than at the centre of the floor plate, and using internal glazed partitions to allow light to travel deeper into the building. It also involves glare management — adjustable solar blinds, diffuse rather than direct overhead lighting, and anti-reflective screen positioning — to ensure that natural light is an asset rather than a source of discomfort.
For neuroinclusive workplaces, managing light quality and adjustability is a specification requirement, not just a design aspiration.
Best for: all workplaces. The absence of daylight is a negative in every context. Floor plate layouts and partition strategies should always prioritise light access to primary workstation areas.
Choosing the Right Approach for Your Office
The most effective modern offices do not choose a single design type and apply it uniformly — they combine elements from several approaches in proportions that reflect the specific team, working patterns, and culture of the organisation. A biophilic breakout area alongside ergonomically specified workstations, acoustic pods for focus and calls, and a resimercial kitchen and social area is a common and highly effective combination for a medium-sized professional services firm.
The key is starting from an honest understanding of how your team actually works and what the office needs to provide, rather than designing for aesthetics or trend. A clear office space plan is the foundation — it translates these principles into a layout that actually works for the people using the space.
At Office Designer, we help businesses translate these principles into practical, beautifully designed workspaces — delivered entirely online, from £799. Our service covers space planning, 3D visuals, furniture schedules, and full specifications ready to hand to a contractor.
Book a free consultation to discuss your office, or explore our completed projects to see these principles in practice.