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A new study by cost consultancy EthosEQ, commissioned by Mute (a leading innovator in adaptable office architecture), reveals that modular rooms can deliver substantial financial savings while significantly reducing environmental impact compared to traditionally built office rooms.
The study compared the financial and environmental performance of modular room-in-room systems with conventional office construction methods, including plasterboard and fixed glass partitions.
Researchers analysed costs across 27 cities on three continents, examining initial installation, reconfiguration during a lease, and reinstatement at lease end. The findings show that while traditional meeting rooms re often treated as single-use assets, modular rooms are often treated as single-use assets, modular rooms can be reused, reconfigured, and relocated multiple times, significantly improving both cost efficiency and carbon performance.
According to the analysis, modular rooms are around 10% cheaper on average at installation, with savings rising up to 60% in high-cost cities such as London, Paris, and New York. Even minor layout changes during a lease were found to deliver average savings of 41%, while major reconfigurations made modular solutions more than 90% more cost effective than demolishing and rebuilding traditional rooms. Lease-end costs were also a factor. The study found that reinstating traditional rooms typically costs more than three times as much as removing modular alternatives.
The study also highlights strong ESG benefits. Traditional rooms are largely single-use, generating waste and embodied carbon at each change. Modular rooms retain and reuse embodied carbon across multiple layouts and locations, aligning with net-zero and circular economy goals.
Colin Wood, Partner at EthosEQ and author of the report said: “Based on market data published by JLL and assuming one configuration during the lease, we’ve calculated that the saving for the entire market would exceed €1 Billion for EMEA and €1.5 billion for the American market.”
Mute CEO Szymon Rychlik said the findings suggest adaptability should be treated as a strategic consideration, he continued: “When the entire lifecycle cost is considered, room-in-room systems like Mute Modular can fundamentally reshape the economics of fit-out decisions across global markets.”
