We spent the first part of Friday evening shouting at each other. After an hour we gave up and stood watching people's lips move, lost in the cacophony roaring around our heads.

I won't name this recently-refurbished pub, not being in the business of giving people bad publicity.

It looks lovely but, like many pubs that have been done up recently, the way it looks doesn't compensate for the way it sounds.

Take a large, high-ceilinged, open room. Remove the carpet and expose the floorboards.

Take away the soft furnishings. Add insufficient wooden or metal furniture, fill it with people, play music, stand back and observe.

What do you get? Echoes of course (and lots of them), making it difficult to hear conversation even at close quarters in many pubs, but seriously impossible in this one.

They don't play the music loud but the frequency at which it is played seems to be very close to that of the human voice, which makes for really nasty interference.

This is made worse because the place echoes like a barn even when stuffed full of people.

It's difficult to describe the total effect. It feels as though the bass line (which is all you can hear of the music), voices and echoes are rolled into one sound.

This big sound, somehow woolly and sharp at the same time, hovers around your head like a comedy hat. So you're enveloped in your own personal blob of inescapable, furry noise.

In Brighton at the moment it's horribly easy to experience an evening of shouting, repeating yourself, mis-hearing and general discomfort.

But it's really quite difficult to find yourself a place where you can sit in comfort and have a good chat without having to bellow at your friends.

The trend for open pub and restaurant spaces with floorboards, plaster walls, hard furniture and no fabric in evidence carries on and on.

I reckon this is "fur coat and no knickers" interior design of the worst kind.

Where appearance is everything and the practical aspects - how people will want to interact within the space - are forgotten in all the excitement.

Good interior design takes into account comfort and practicality as well as style.

Why accept less when it's easy to design with both in mind?

A similar-sized space, the Quod Bar, has got it right - a large, visually stimulating open space within which tables sit, each in its own discreet pool of sound and light.

You can hear the music but it doesn't interfere with conversation. It doesn't echo and there's no need to shout.

Lovely.

-Kate Naylor, Brighton