2025 Office Design Trends

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min read

Patrick Isitt
Senior Content Manager
Content specialist in office design and build.

As the workplace continues to evolve, so do the expectations for high-quality office spaces. In 2025, businesses are prioritising office environments that inspire productivity, support wellbeing, and foster collaboration—all while reflecting their brand values.

The trend toward dynamic spaces that support hybrid working remains strong, while the demand for premium, sustainable spaces that enhance the employee experience also grew significantly in 2024. Companies are leveraging office design as a key tool for attracting and retaining talent in an increasingly competitive market.

Looking ahead, office design is becoming more intentional—balancing function with aesthetics and individual preferences. From creating environments that encourage movement and collaboration to integrating technology for remote-first work, the office landscape in 2025 will be defined by flexibility, sustainability and user-centric design.

Top Office Design Trends in 2025

We’ve reflected on the projects we’ve worked on over the last few months, the conversations we’ve had with clients and the expertise of our workplace design specialists to highlight six trends that we believe are shaping office design in 2025.

1. Provide Retreat
2. Encourage Movement
3. Embed Inclusivity
4. Elevate User Experience
5. Build for Adaption
6. Promote Choice

1. Provide Retreat

More consideration is being taken to account for the different ways people utilise their working environment, depending on their individual needs. Working from home meant more choice, be it the ability to move into another room for focused work or to step out for some fresh air, it enabled us to expand our environments within close proximity.

A retreat space can be much needed for those who might prefer time to themselves to recharge. In 2025, the emphasis on employee wellbeing has led to the integration of dedicated wellness rooms within office environments. These spaces offer employees a sanctuary to recharge, meditate or engage in quiet reflection, addressing the diverse needs of the modern workforce.

However, these spaces can also take shape in different ways, such as a dedicated library or a quiet corner in the office which is furnished in a different style to its immediate surroundings. Retreats need to be informal and they must prioritise the user. This means that acoustics and lighting need to be considered. The term retreat is not just about not working, it’s time to reflect in a space that is decidedly different to the rest of the office.

2. Encourage Movement

The aim of encouraging movement is to avoid ‘nesting’, where staff remain in their assigned areas of the office, often creating a silo. When encouraging employees to utilise and pass through more of the office space, interactions and chance meetings with others in the office become more common.

Strategically placing different departments or teams can promote cross-disciplinary interactions and discourage people feeling isolated in one specific part of the office. When this idea of moving between zones or floors within an office building is executed properly then you can create a diverse and interesting landscape.

By pulling people away from their designated areas or where people typically work, these workspaces become more effective and allow people to focus on that specific task. Positioning certain amenities and spaces further away than what they’re used to incentivises people to move through the office and improves collaboration and socialising. This ultimately helps to enhance productivity and the quality of interactions, making time in the office more purposeful.

3. Embed Inclusivity

In 2025, inclusivity is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a fundamental aspect of workplace design. Creating environments that accommodate diverse employee needs is essential for fostering a sense of belonging and enabling everyone to thrive. From physical accessibility to sensory design considerations, inclusivity ensures that the workplace is not just functional but empowering for all.

According to Oktra’s Inclusive Workplace Design Report, one third of the workforce feel that inclusivity in their workplace is limited or non-existent, while only 20.6% believe their workplace is completely inclusive, suggesting that many businesses still struggle to create fully accommodating environments.

Inclusive design prioritizes accessible layouts with features like wide corridors, height-adjustable desks and clearly marked pathways, while also incorporating sensory-friendly elements such as adjustable lighting, soundproofing and temperature controls to accommodate neurodiverse employees. Flexible workstations with modular furniture and adaptable layouts further ensure the workplace supports diverse working styles, fostering both productivity and collaboration.

Download The Inclusive Workplace Design Report to learn how to make your office truly inclusive.
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4. Elevate User Experience

Terms like ‘resimercial’ and ‘hotelification’ are shaped by experience. Resimercial blends the concepts of residential and commercial and the hotelification of the workplace is about learning from the rules in hospitality, namely hotel, environments. When we apply these ideas to workplace design, we find that it is evolving to include individualised and aesthetically pleasing spaces often found in residential or hotel environments.

Despite that, we don’t want to try and recreate a home in the office – they’re two fundamentally different environments. But drawing on the influences of home or what it feels like when you enter a hospitality setting, the office can unlock a new set of emotions and provide a different experience to the one we’ve become used to.

It all comes down to how it feels to be in the office and this can from high-level features such as access to natural light, food and drink amenities and technology down to smaller details like customisable controls for lighting and temperature, planting and quality materials. To elevate the user experience, there is a requirement to provide intuitive, human-centric settings. If you can achieve a sense of the personal within the office then there there’s going to be massive benefits in terms of thinking, comfort, performance and working relationships.

5. Build for Adaption

Businesses are faced with constant change and uncertainty, particularly in recent years. We’re seeing organisations evolve their work models and policies as they have to adapt to the working landscape. What suits a business now might not be the same in a year’s time and beyond as there is the chance of growth or a change in policies which can put a lot of pressure on their real estate.

The idea of building for adaption is something that needs to be considered at day-one or the early stages of proposed changes. This means businesses can establish a discipline in the base build design that allows the key circulation areas to be maintained if or when you need to adapt your workplace. Businesses should be aiming to get to a place where they can change their environment without having to completely dismantle the design and the space. This relates to desk locations and the corresponding cable infrastructure; everything needs to be considered.

While landlords are offering more flexible terms, most deals will be looking at three or four years minimum until a break point and that’s a long way away. Organisations are changing so quickly now that you want to be thinking as far ahead as possible and putting as little restriction as possible on your space.

6. Promote Choice

Promoting choice through modern office design centres around creating work environments that support a diverse range of activities and preferences. Today’s workforce demands greater autonomy over their work settings, driving businesses towards spaces far less binary than in the past. Instead of thinking about the workplace as the number of desks vs. the number of meeting rooms, workplace design must now empower employees to decide where and how they work, directly enhancing efficiency and engagement.

These choices can range from quiet areas for focused work to breakout spaces that encourage interaction and movement. One example of how this could take shape is the consideration of areas beyond the traditional desk, such as touch-down points in transitional spaces. This promotes greater flexibility and spontaneous collaboration without needing a formal meeting room, while also facilitating one of our other key trends—movement.

The design principle of offering multiple areas for work not only caters to the unique spectrum of work modes within each company but underscores a growing recognition of the importance of flexibility and employee satisfaction in achieving a high-performing environment. Businesses must consider how they enhance employee engagement through choice— supporting the ad-hoc needs of employees and fostering a dynamic and adaptable work culture.

The High-Performance Workplace Guide

With user needs continuing to evolve alongside the future of work, creating an environment that engages employees has become a huge challenge for businesses.

Download our guide to designing high-performance environments, with best practice examples and tips to consider.
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2025 is set to be a pivotal year for workplace design, as businesses increasingly recognise the importance of creating spaces that go beyond functionality to inspire, engage and support their people. With a growing emphasis on user experience, inclusivity and sustainability, the office is evolving into a dynamic environment with a role that far exceeds previous expectations.

As hybrid working solidifies and workplace strategies continue to adapt, flexibility and choice will remain at the forefront. The most successful workplaces will be those that anticipate and respond to the diverse needs of their users, delivering environments that balance comfort, performance and adaptability.