Edinburgh’s New Town and Old Town are packed with Category A and B listed buildings that now double as offices. You’ve got law firms on Charlotte Square, tech startups working out of converted warehouses on Leith’s Commercial Street, and creative agencies crammed into Georgian townhouses on Queen Street. They’re gorgeous spaces to work in, but they come with a problem most modern offices don’t have: you can’t just drill into the walls.
Scotland has more than 46,500 listed building records, according to Historic Environment Scotland, and a huge chunk of those are in Edinburgh’s city centre. For businesses renting or refurbishing space in one of these protected properties, noise tends to be the first headache once the desks go in. So what actually works when you can’t touch the original stonework, and what should you know before getting started?
Why Listed Offices Are So Loud
The things that make these buildings beautiful are the same things that make them loud. High ceilings with ornate cornicing, bare stone walls, original timber floors, large sash windows. They all bounce sound around instead of soaking it up. Stick thirty people in an open-plan layout on a Georgian first floor, and you’ll hear conversations carrying from one end of the room to the other.
Modern office fit-outs typically deal with this by fixing acoustic panels straight to walls and ceilings. But in a listed building, any work that affects the building’s character, structure or original features could need listed building consent from the local planning authority. That covers drilling into stone, messing with plasterwork or changing period ceilings.
What You Can Do Without Consent
The good news is that most acoustic treatments built for heritage spaces don’t need any permanent fixings at all.
Freestanding acoustic screens can go between desks and break up sound paths across an open floor. They don’t attach to anything and you can move them around or take them out without leaving a mark. Suspended ceiling rafts hang from lightweight wire systems and absorb sound before it bounces off a high plaster ceiling, and because they don’t touch the original surface, they’ll usually fall outside the scope of consent.
Then there are fabric-wrapped wall panels mounted on freestanding frames or hung from picture rails, which avoid any contact with protected walls entirely. Specialist office soundproofing has come a long way in recent years. A lot of these products are now built specifically for spaces where permanent alterations aren’t an option. That means you can treat a room properly and still return it to its original state at the end of a lease.
Talk to Your Conservation Officer Early
If you’re planning a fit-out in a listed building, get in touch with the City of Edinburgh Council’s conservation team before you commit to any design. They’ll tell you what counts as an alteration and what doesn’t, and they can flag potential problems before you’ve already spent money on products that won’t get approved.
Keep in mind that Scotland’s consent rules cover interior changes too, not just the outside of the building. Even something like fixing brackets into an original plaster wall could need consent if it affects the building’s character. Having that conversation early on will save you time and stop any nasty surprises later.
How to Keep the Building’s Character and Still Get Work Done
Edinburgh businesses don’t have to pick between a productive workspace and a protected one. Freestanding screens, ceiling rafts, non-invasive panel systems and even simple soft furnishings can all bring noise levels down without touching a single original feature.
The key is to think about acoustics at the design stage, not once everyone’s already complaining. If you’re moving into a listed office or upgrading an existing one, factor in the acoustic plan alongside the furniture layout and the IT setup. It’s a lot cheaper to get right at the start than to retrofit once the space is live.
Plan early, go with reversible solutions, get professional advice, and make sure your conservation officer is on board before the fit-out kicks off. That way, you’ll protect both the building’s history and your team’s ability to concentrate.
