The Financial Times occupies an audaciously undistinguished building on the fringes of the City, in which the carpet tiles are coffee-stained, functional desks are arranged in lines and mice roam freely.

Yet to me the office is entirely satisfactory as it has each of the four things I mind about most. There are interesting people to talk to; a desk of my own that I can keep as tidy or messy as I like; a location easy to get to on a bicycle and a man on the door who says “hello, Lucy” every time I go in.

In an ideal world two further things would be nice: a bit more daylight; a view of something other than a hideous red-brick building. But then I suppose you can’t have everything.

Or can you? During the past few months I have been visiting a series of brand new offices whose owners are so pleased with them that they invited me (along with an FT camera crew) inside to snoop around.

The first thing I noticed is that people have got better at building offices. They are no longer designing white-collar factories for getting your head down. Nor are they building places intended to inspire fear and envy by the extent of the marble reception hall or size of the indoor waterfall. Instead the modern office is a bright, egalitarian space, a temple to fun and creativity.

It doesn’t matter how uncreative your business – you can be a firm of accountants, a multinational selling soap powder – the emphasis is still on playfulness, with a look that is somewhere between kindergarten and modern furniture showroom.

Primary colours

In all the offices I visited, fluorescent lights are out and funky lampshades are in. Primary colours are everywhere. There are no straight lines. At the CBI, the employers’ group and possibly the least playful organisation in the UK, each employee has a coaster on their desk with a picture of them pulling a funny face.

Everything is arranged to encourage meeting and mingling: there are “pods” and “hubs” and seats upholstered in jewel colours. The bodily and spiritual needs of the worker – never a concern for office designers in the past – are all catered for. There are comfy, private places to make phone calls, healthy food, fancy gyms and even meditation rooms.

Is this progress? Even though I detest the infantilising primary colours and the insistence on compulsory fun, I can’t pretend these new offices don’t look nicer than my own. Yet I’m still not sure how much difference it makes to the experience of the people who work in them.

As gyms and food are widely available outside the office, it is surely not much of an advantage if they are inside, too. And it is hard to believe cooler furniture means higher productivity. At home I care about my surroundings more than is seemly. I have just bought a lampshade so expensive I have to tell myself it is a work of art to justify the outlay. Yet as soon as I get to the office, I take a rest from such materialistic excesses. The style of the lights doesn’t move me at all. I simply don’t care. None of it belongs to me, I’m not responsible for it, and that feels like a relief.

One thing I did covet were the spectacular views some offices had over London – to sit all day with the city spread out before you must be agreeable. But even then I’m not sure how much difference it would make.

Productive

The

FT

office has four sides, three of which offer dismal views, while one looks out over the Thames to St Paul’s. Yet the people with the river view don’t strike me as any more productive or happier than anyone else. Like most privileges, the river view gives a minor boost on receipt – but then if you try to take it away, all hell breaks loose.

Yet even with their great views and jaunty decor, I still wouldn’t swap any of the offices I visited for my own. In almost all of them, one big thing was badly wrong – too many of the desks were empty.

This is the great irony of modern working life. Just as architects and designers are learning how to build better offices, people are losing the habit of working in them.

The only office I visited that was properly populated was the one where working at home is frowned on and where everyone had their own desk.

At the others, flexible working was encouraged, and hot desking was rampant. Anyone sufficiently retro to turn up at the office could therefore expect to find half their team at home, and have to content themselves with sitting at any old desk, surrounded either by randomers – or no one at all.

Set against this, the sleek design amounts to nothing. After all, where is the joy in office life if you can't rely on seeing the same people every day and saying to them wasn't Homeland brilliant last night?

lucy.kellaway@ft.com