There is probably no office where everyone is happy with the temperature at the same time. Some people are too hot. Others are too cold. Someone opens a window. Someone else asks for it to be closed immediately.
From the outside, this looks like a minor everyday disagreement. In reality, it is a revealing engineering problem. Office comfort is almost never determined by a single number on a controller.
Temperature is only part of comfort
When someone says ‘I am cold’ or ‘I am hot’, they are not always referring specifically to air temperature. Very often, they are describing their overall experience at their workstation.
This feeling is affected by:
- solar radiation through façade glazing;
- air velocity;
- humidity;
- heat from people, equipment and lighting;
- clothing and physical activity;
- the desk's position relative to a window, diffuser or door;
- the operating mode of the ventilation and air conditioning systems.
This is why two people sitting in the same office can honestly describe the same system in completely different ways.
An office is not a single thermal zone
This is particularly clear in modern offices with extensive glazing, open-plan spaces and varied patterns of use. Near the façade, a person receives additional heat from the sun. In the centre of the room, that load is absent.
One employee sits directly in an air stream. Another is in an area where the air barely moves. Ten people gather in a meeting room within half an hour, sharply changing the load. In an open-plan office, changes are slower but constant.
The problem in an office is often not that the system is failing to work. It is that the space is used unevenly.
Why complaints cannot be resolved with the controller alone
The simplest response to a complaint is to change the temperature. Someone is hot — turn it down. Someone is cold — turn it up. Then down again. Then up again.
The building gradually slips into a state of constant manual intervention. The system no longer manages comfort. It responds to the loudest complaint of the day.
Sometimes the owner or tenant then draws the wrong conclusion: more powerful equipment is needed. In reality, what may be needed is different zoning, different air distribution, balancing, solar shading or simply a better workstation layout.
Comfort starts with space planning
A good office does not start with an air conditioner. It starts with understanding how people actually use the space.
Where the permanent workstations are. Where the meeting rooms are. Which façade has the greatest solar load. Where equipment is located. Where people sit for eight hours and where they spend ten minutes. Where quiet is needed. Where greater air movement is acceptable.
Only then should the system requirements be defined: how many zones, what airflow rates, which diffusers, where to position sensors, what control logic to use and how the facilities team will understand what is happening in practice.
The aim is not to silence everyone
In a real office, it is impossible to keep absolutely everyone equally satisfied all the time. People differ. Workstations differ. Loads change throughout the day.
The engineering goal is therefore not to find one ‘perfect’ temperature for everyone. It is to reduce the number of problem zones, make the system predictable and give the facilities team proper tools for analysis.
A good office is not one where nobody ever complains. It is one where complaints do not become the means of controlling building services.
Capacity is no substitute for engineering judgement
Sometimes the best solution is not a more powerful air conditioner. It is external solar shading. A different workstation layout. Better diffuser positioning. Air balancing. CO₂ monitoring. Clear zone control logic.
So when people constantly argue about office temperature, the problem very often lies elsewhere. Human comfort depends on many factors that cannot be captured by a single thermometer.
That is precisely why good office engineering is not a battle for 22°C. It means working with space, people, air, sunlight, operating modes and expectations.
