Desk dividers

Acoustic desk dividers for the office

In an office, most noise is created at the workstation itself: on the phone, in video calls, in a quick chat across the desk. An acoustic desk divider tackles exactly that. It dampens the voice right at the source, provides visual privacy from the person opposite and brings more calm and better room acoustics to the workstation — especially in open-plan offices, call centres and hot-desking areas. Our desk dividers are made to a high standard in Europe and clamp onto the desktop without drilling.

Why noise control at the desk makes such a difference

In an open-plan office, it is less the general noise level that disturbs people than intelligible speech from the next desk. Our brain can hardly tune it out, and that costs concentration. Noise control at the desk therefore mainly means catching this speech. An acoustically effective divider between two workstations absorbs part of this sound before it reaches the person opposite. Speech intelligibility at the neighbouring desk drops, phone calls and conversations are less disruptive, and the noise level in the room becomes calmer overall.

Visual privacy at the desk

Besides sound, movement is distracting too: the person opposite getting up, making a call or looking at their screen. A divider for the desk and workstation interrupts this line of sight and provides visual screening and more privacy at the workstation, without closing up the room. When you are sitting you are screened, and when you stand up you can still see across the office. Especially at facing desks and at workstations with lots of passing traffic, this makes a big difference for focused work.

What desk dividers can and cannot do

A desk divider acts on the direct sound between two workstations. It only has a limited effect on the reverberation in the whole room, because its area is too small. For good room acoustics throughout the office, combine it with wall sound absorbers, ceiling rafts or free-standing acoustic partitions and room dividers. Our page Sound absorbers for offices shows how they work together, and there are more tips in the article Improving office acoustics.

Desk dividers: Desk Divider Slim, Plus or Icon?

• Desk Divider Slim is the slim acoustic desk divider, 25 mm thick (1,200 × 600 mm), in white, silver grey, anthracite or black. Unobtrusive, versatile and the choice for many workstations.
• Desk Divider Plus is the premium version with a total thickness of 45 mm, a frame and an interchangeable fabric cover, in the formats 1,350 × 600, 1,450 × 550 and 1,600 × 500 mm. With absorption class A, it absorbs the most sound of the three models. We agree the fabric colour or your own design with you.
• Desk Divider Icon carries your logo or design as a cut-out in the top layer, in 1,200 × 600 mm or 1,000 × 740 mm. This turns the desk divider into a brand feature at the workstation.

Mounting a desk divider: with clamps, no drilling

All Desk Dividers are clamped to the edge of the desk with two metal brackets; they can be mounted without drilling. So that the clamps fit your desk, we need the thickness of the desktop and the free edge; a photo of the underside of the desk helps us take cable trays and crossbars into account. We put together the brackets and, for the Desk Divider Plus, replacement covers to suit you in the quote. You can swap the fabric cover of the Plus later without replacing the element.

Absorption class: what the letters mean

The sound absorption of acoustic elements is divided into classes A to E under DIN EN ISO 11654. Class A stands for very high acoustic effectiveness, class E for low. For a desk divider, besides the class, the height above the desktop matters most: it needs to interrupt the line of sight and the mouth-to-ear path to the person opposite. The values for each model are listed in the technical data or available on request.

For teams, entire floors and the home office

All desk dividers are made to order, in about four to five weeks. You send an enquiry with the version and quantity and receive a binding quote. For several workstations or an entire office, we plan desk dividers, wall and ceiling elements together, with a requirement calculation under DIN 18041 on request (Request a quote). In a home office with two workstations in one room, a desk divider brings calm too. Businesses can pay by invoice via a personal quote. Fire safety certificates, such as a tested fire rating under EN 13501-1 or B1 under DIN 4102, are available for projects on request; the standard versions are not generally classified as flame-retardant.