Acoustical Wall Panel System Reduces Noise
Here are a couple of design tips to help reduce the noise level in your office or office cubicle. First of all, take a look at the kinds of hard surfaces you have in the space. Look specifically at the ceiling, the walls and the floors to see what you types of products you have there. The amount of hard surface can cause the noise level in the area to increase dramatically. Think of going to a gymnasium or a dance studio where there was nothing but hard surfaces and the sound isn’t absorbed. Do you remember how noisy it was? The same concept applies to your office environment. Try fixing:
- Ceiling Tile. A good ceiling tile will absorb sound waves. If you have a plaster ceiling you might want to consider adding some acoustical tiles to the surface to help absorb sound.
- Wall Panels. There is a company called Working Walls. They have a fabric covered acoustical panel system that is attached to the existing walls with Velcro. These can be used to reduce the amount of noise within a room and to prevent sound from penetrating the walls and disturbing adjacent areas. Great product.
- Speech Privacy Systems. In our area John Ferguson is the speech privacy genius. He has a system that works to digitally increase speech privacy. We use his system in banks, medical offices, and government agencies to reduce noise and increase speech privacy. Our designers think this is an absolute “must have” for open office environments.
- Flooring. If you have a hard surface floor that tends to increase the amount of noise in the space. Just the foot fall noise alone can be annoying. If you have this situation see if you can add some soft surface flooring in any of the areas. This is especially good in enclosed conference rooms. Add an area rug if possible. Or, you might consider looking into different types of soft flooring products like carpet squares or rubber tile. Either would result in noise reduction.
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The Speech Privacy System is another cost effective tool to add to your privacy arsenal. Since this is a direct field system, you can provide sound masking at a much lower volume than plenum based systems.
In addition, it is the ONLY Greenspec Certified sound masking/distributed audio system on the market, for your “green” construction project. This system will also provide paging and music distribution for your project, saving you the cost of a separate paging/music system.
All offices need a plan that reduces noise throughout the workplace. I currently work for a company that uses ceiling tiles that block the transmission of soundwaves. Also, we use Working Walls and a have a cushioned floor. However, I used to work for a company where nothing was used to reduce the noise. Take it from someone that has seen the situation from both sides; productivity is decreased due to a noisy office.
Take a look as well at the information Armstrong World Industries’ Ceilings and Walls has:
Videos: http://www.armstrong.com/commceilingsna/article49238.html
and
Resources:
http://www.armstrong.com/commceilingsna/article51891.html?incid=reduce_noise_bdg
Thanks, John! You are the expert in this field. Thanks for the additional information. Kathie
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Nicolette,
I hope everyone is reading your blog. You really have some excellent information. Thanks. Kathie
Thank you, Kathie! I can see that some people have clicked from your website to mine, so more people ARE reading it thanks to you! (These crosslinks are helpful to both parties, by the way. I am an expert in search engine marketing, and I can tell you that when Google finds two-way links, it triggers an algorhythm that causes Google to give both sites a higher value rating.)
A good ceiling tile will absorb sound waves. If you have a plaster ceiling you might want to consider adding some acoustical tiles to the surface to help absorb sound.