Noisy Offices are a Major Distractor – For Clients and Employees
If you work in a noisy office, chances are you’re getting distracted from the work you should be doing. No one likes hearing too much noise while they work, especially if it’s loud or just plain annoying. Whether you have your own office or your own cubicle, you don’t need to hear what everyone around you is doing.
Stop Noise Transfer Between Offices
In modern offices, the main source of office-to-office noise, or noise flanking between adjacent areas, is through the drop-ceiling. These drop-ceiling tiles are specifically designed to minimize cost and provide an aesthetic background, but not to block sound traveling through them. In fact, often times they are designed to allow sound to pass through in order to reduce echo in the office, but this just ends up resulting in a noisy office.
If you look just above the drop-ceiling tiles, you’ll also see that often-times the wall separating offices does not extend up to the true ceiling, allowing even more sound to pass through. This equates to only a thin, flimsy barrier separating one discussion from another.
Soundproofing Materials Catalog
If you are experiencing noise issues similar to this in your office, you may need to do one of two things – heighten and strengthen the wall between offices, or reinforce the existing drop-ceiling tiles. While modifying the wall may require several days and significant construction, reinforcing the tiles with our Drop-Ceiling Noise Blokker is quick and easy.
Drop-ceiling Noise Blokker can be installed in minutes, simply laid on top of the existing panels, by office employees or maintenance staff. The cost is extremely economical, and the new 3-layer composite design is made to block noise transfer while further improving the sound absorption of the existing ceiling tiles.
Reducing Echo and Reverb in Your Office
Another common noise complaint we get in noisy offices involves large, “shared” office spaces with cubicles or assembly areas.
Often times it can be difficult to hear in these areas, as the reverberation increases, the speech intelligibility decreases in inverse proportion. This is the case when the room is quite large, and exacerbated by parallel surfaces with minimal absorption (rugs, furniture, tapestry). In many offices, inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting is used in construction, but this material is extremely inefficient at absorbing background noise.
When background sound absorption is the solution you need, we suggest acoustical absorption panels or similar absorption products. These panels absorb extra background noise to reduce echo and reverberation in large spaces. They’re commonly used in auditoriums, worship centers and restaurants.
When treating a space with sound absorbing panels, it’s important not to over treat depending on the type of atmosphere you want. If you over treat with too much sound absorption, you might lose all of the echo and reverberation which could result in what we call a “dead space”.
Sound Masking in the Office
If you work in an open office space filled with cubicles, you probably don’t have a lot of privacy. Another consequence of being in a cubicle right next to your coworker is that while they can hear everything you’re doing, you can also hear everything they’re doing.
Sound masking provides a space with ambient background noise to help cover the distracting noises that you might hear during the day. It also helps you maintain your speech privacy while your or you neighbor are on important business calls.
There can also be a lack of background noise in office spaces that would make the office a good place to implement sound masking. Some office spaces are so quiet that you can hear all of your coworker or employees just breathing and typing which can also be distracting.
Consider using a Commercial Office Sound Masking System
Benefits of Soundproofing a Noisy Office
Addressing these common office noise issues is critical to:
- Increase workplace productivity
- Soundproof discussion for proprietary, or security, reasons
- Increase workplace enthusiasm & employee satisfaction
- Escape from the office background noise yourself
Commercial Acoustics is a tailored acoustical consultant and solutions provider to help you solve each of these issues. Let us know how we can help, today.
