Acoustics are a hot topic in the office environment, usually in the form of, "turn the music down", or, "wow they have a loud phone voice" …sound familiar?

Offices great and small suffer from distracting noises in the workplace. When you’re in a work environment, it's inevitable that phone conversations and noisy printers will be creating varying levels of noise pollution, as well as the regular debate as to how loud the music system should be.

Although many of these occurrences can't be completely eradicated, innovative office noise reduction solutions can lessen the impact that these unwanted sounds have on your team’s ability to do their work.

How to Reduce Noise in Offices

For those looking at how to reduce noise in offices, acoustic installations and materials can help considerably. Additionally, creating quiet concentration spaces as well as sociable breakout areas are also great for breaking up open plan office spaces.

Take a look at the following advice to find out how to achieve a more focused, productive and positive work environment for you and your team.

1. Acoustic Features in Interior Design

We've always featured acoustic products within our interior design projects, particularly for our office-based clients, due to their office noise reduction benefits and ability to help create a comfortable environment.

Acoustic panels, artwork, screens and ceiling rafts are among the acoustic absorption products that can be stylishly incorporated into the interior design of an office to significantly reduce reverberation.

There are now many creative solutions available for controlling acoustics in the office and they are an understated solution when it comes to improving the productivity and wellbeing of your workforce.

We work closely with acoustic specialists to provide our clients with the most innovative acoustic absorption products on the market!

2. Providing Quiet Concentration Spaces

Despite the fact the many employers want an open-plan workspace to boost collaboration within their team, some individuals would benefit more from a quiet area to knuckle down and tackle a task with a tight deadline. Providing an agile environment with a variety of workspaces to suit different work modes is vital to ensuring you have the perfect environment to complement the diverse needs of your workforce.

To cater to these situations, businesses can benefit from creating a quiet room that promotes individual work for employees who need to focus away from the hustle and bustle of the main office area.

If you want to create this type of area for your employees, consider the space you have available in your current office. An unused meeting room can be turned into a quiet room for employees to work in. Alternatively, creative partitions could be created to break up the open plan area and isolate the noisier areas of the space.

3. Creating a Sociable Breakout Area

Breakout Area for Claritas Solutions by Absolute Commercial Interiors

When considering how to reduce noise in offices, breakout areas are often overlooked due to being associated with increased communication and socialisation. However, a dedicated breakout area welcoming interaction between employees actually encourages people to move away from the main office area to socialise.

Directing these conversations to a designated sociable space helps to prevent distractions in the workspace whilst reducing overall noise levels for those working at their desks.

To fully understand the benefits of an office breakout area, check out our blog post and find out how a space like this has the potential to benefit your business and assist with noise reduction in your office.

4. Sound Masking

Sound masking is engineered to only overlap the frequencies of human speech. Its name accurately describes what sound masking can help do - mask noise, and by doing so, office employees can benefit from greater concentration and productivity levels.

Businesses can utilise this by installing sound masking systems in the office. Resonics explain that, "adding unobtrusive sound into an office reduces the intelligibility of human space and facilitates greater speech privacy while reducing distracting noises.".

Although similar, sound masking is not to be confused with white noise, which is amplified sound featuring a combination of different frequencies.

Again, white noise has been associated with higher levels of concentration when played as a background noise in the office. However, if the volume were to be turned up, white noise would be terribly irritating - imagine a loud AM radio static for a pretty accurate representation of white noise!

5. Introducing Biophilic Elements

Office Noise Reduction Using Biophilic Design

Biophilic elements are known for their fresh aesthetics but not so well known for their acoustic benefits! Natural plants are a great office noise reduction solution, with an added bonus being their health and wellbeing benefits - not to mention that these interior features are also extremely on-trend!

Our previous blog post uncovers these fantastic benefits, but acoustics is probably one of the lesser known advantages of biophilic design. Nevertheless, office plants help to diffuse noise in the office and shape a much more comfortable environment to work in.

With a wide variety of office noise reduction solutions available, it's about finding the solutions that are right for you and your team. Some alterations might be easier than others to implement depending on your current office environment, but small changes can make all the difference in helping you to shape a better place to work for your employees.

If you've realised that your office design or layout no longer works for you and your team, our design and build solution can help you to refurbish your space with innovative designs and acoustic features throughout. We often work with clients looking for information as to how they can reduce noise in offices, so talk to us about making your workplace a better place to work!