Quiet Room
- skrawic
- Sep 8
- 3 min read
One of the newer trends in life is the need for quiet space.
September 9th, 2025
This can be for a variety of reasons. Amongst these reasons are sensory reparations, focus, and a place to re-grip on your day. Recently I saw a quiet room in London’s Heathrow Airport (not a prayer room) and saw a client’s office designed with closed off booths and a variety of private meeting areas. This is for real and the time is now!
My longtime client/partner FIRST Robotics started offering these a few years ago at local FIRST Robotics Competitions recognizing that sometimes their participants need an area to mentally restore themselves in the midst of a long and active event schedule. Within a couple of years their understanding increased with their popularity— people need quiet to discover peace. I salute them for recognizing this and actually doing something about it.
In your personal life, don’t you sometimes need to just find a quiet area, free of outside influence to get yourself together? I do. Both in my personal life and on the road when I’m producing live shows. I regularly seek out areas to re-grip and move forward. Sometimes it is a loading dock, sometimes it’s an event office, and sometimes it’s in a stairwell, but I figure it out.
Meetings Today magazine has a great article on this subject this month:
Event Well listed 25 reasons why you should have a quiet room at an event site:
Although I generally agree with both the sentiment and some reasons why they note the reasons to have quiet rooms, I would like to advance the discussion to what a quiet room should and should not have in my experienced opinion.
First, it should be as far away from the noise and hustle of the show as possible. Having a very visible quiet room is both not private, but probably not really quiet.
Once you have secured that, this is what the room should have:
Different types of seating- Banquet round tables with a smaller number of seats are good, with puzzles or pictures with crayons. Yes, adults will use these! If your budget and or venue can support this, add couches, and small short cocktail rounds. Mix up the seating so that there is no perfect order, and have as many seats not facing the doorway as possible
Adjustable lighting so that the room is neither dark nor bright.
Well ventilated and ensure that it does not get too warm
Second, here is what the room should NOT have:
No electronics, none allowed or provided. This is not a personal office workspace; it is a shared quiet space.
No music
No scents
No visuals, including show schedules, signage or uplifting quotes. If it has a view, close the shades if possible.
No Religious recognition. This is not a prayer room
No wireless access
No food and beverage, except water
This space should be rather bare and boring. Please do not try and shape this room as a resort style getaway yoga retreat. They have their place, but not as a group quiet room. This room should simply provide a sanctuary from the rest of the show and let the attendee find their peace in their own way, with the quiet assistance from the show.
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