Acoustic Panels for your Office

Acoustic panels can be a great way to reduce noise levels in your office. Acoustic solutions are especially helpful if you have an open office space with no carpet or ceiling tiles. There are many times when the workplace can get loud and distracting, and this happens because of the noisy environment created by various sources such as phones ringing, machines running, people talking loudly on speakerphones, etc. If you want to improve the overall productivity of your employees by reducing distractions caused by background noise, then investing in some acoustic panels for your office can definitely help.

Acoustic Panels in a Home Studio Setting

 

Conversations are a critical aspect of a workplace.

There are many aspects of a workplace that can be improved, but one of the most important is the conversations your employees have. This may seem obvious, but these discussions enable people to learn about work and share information. You want to ensure there aren't any inhibitors to the free flow of that communication. As you've probably noticed if you've ever had trouble hearing someone, even small amounts of noise (including soft ambient noise) can interfere with conversation. That's why it's so important to make sure everyone has access to clear communication in the workplace.

A noisy office can be detrimental to your company because it makes it difficult or impossible for employees to communicate with each other effectively. This means they can't collaborate on projects as well as they could and miss out on opportunities for sharing ideas or solving problems that would benefit everyone at your company.

A noisy office with open spaces can be hard to work in

Open office spaces can be a great way to encourage collaboration and increase productivity. However, these same benefits are often negated by the adverse effects of excessive noise in your office.

Open offices are designed to maximize communication, but if you don't have some sort of sound management like acoustic panels installed on the walls of your office, conversations can easily bleed through to other areas and cause distractions for employees who aren't involved in them. This can lead to a drop in efficiency and overall work quality as people struggle to focus on their own tasks at hand while also trying to ignore what's going on around them. It's easy to downplay the severity of this, but an unpublished study out of Texas Christian University found that a noisy workspace can truly hurt productivity and lead to attrition and burnout.

Person sitting in home office with lighted acoustic panels visible.

Open spaces without carpet or ceiling tiles need sound absorption

Most offices have acoustic panels installed in their ceilings to reduce the noise level for a variety of reasons. However, what about those open-plan offices that don't have any soundproofing in the ceiling?

If you haven’t already, it's time to start thinking about sound absorption for your office. In an open-plan space without acoustic panels or other forms of sound dampening, there is nothing to stop sound waves from being reflected back into the room from different surfaces—they're free to bounce off whatever walls are present and travel through your entire office. The result is an unpleasant reverberation that makes it hard for people to concentrate and feel like they're in an echo chamber, with a constant din of noise that can be draining.

Sound absorption can help solve this problem by absorbing high-frequency sounds before they reach you; but if there isn't anything around your desk that absorbs those low frequencies as well (like a wall), then you'll still hear them coming from everywhere around the room—including across from where someone else may be talking loudly on their phone! That's why the installation of one or more acoustic panels and other sound absorbing tactics should always be considered alongside any new carpeting installation at a new building site: these materials will ensure noise reduction in the open workspace so that no one has trouble hearing themselves think!

Acoustic panels are a great way to reduce noise levels in office settings.

Acoustic panels are a great way to reduce noise levels in office settings. They can be used to create a more comfortable workspace and improve speech privacy, as well as help with sound masking. To learn more about acoustic panels and how they can help you create a more productive work environment for your employees, check out the following resources:

Where should you place acoustic panels in the office

You can place acoustic panels in different areas of your office. However, there are some places where you should definitely put them.

  • Corner: One of the most common places to put acoustic panels is in the corners of your room. Unfortunatley, simple acoustic panels won't suffice here - you'll need to consider bass traps, another type of sound absorbing material that focuses on the long waves of low frequency bass. Low frequencies tend to compound in corners in an office, so using bass traps would be ideal for this.

  • Walls near workspaces: Another good location for placing acoustic panels is on the walls near workspaces. Sound will reflect off surfaces, and having sound absorbing panels near this area will help to drastically reduce the reflections that can disturb their work.

  • Meeting Rooms: If you have a meeting room with carpeting or rugs on the floor, this is a good spot for acoustic panels. Often, meeting rooms benefit from being private spaces, and including acoustic treatment in them will help absorb much of the discernable sounds from speech. This ensures the room stays private.

  • Ceiling: Placing acoustic solutions near the ceiling can also be effective because it absorbs sound waves that travel downwards towards your ears while they travel upwards towards those who are speaking with each other or listening through headsets or speakers (e.g., podcast hosts).

  • Floor: It’s important not to forget about placing acoustical solutions under tables so that people sitting there don’t feel like they're being bombarded by loud sounds coming up through their chairs! If you have carpet or rugs, these materials are usually sufficient for sound control.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it for today. We hope that we have helped you understand the importance of acoustic panels in today’s workplace and how they can help with your office acoustics! If you want to learn more about the different types of acoustic panels available or what material they are made from please check out our other blog posts on the topic.

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