Clacking keyboards, humming equipment, conversation, and ringing phones are all daily occurrences at the modern workplace – but, just because they’re typical doesn’t mean they aren’t distracting to employees. In fact, according to a recent article by the Harvard Business Review, noise distractions interfered with over a third of the employees surveyed. That’s a big number! Not only that, but if you take into account open office interior design trends rising in popularity across the corporate world, coping with unruly and distracting sounds and noises at the workplace is becoming more and more commonplace.

The best way to combat distracting noises while still keeping your modern, open-office space design is through improving your office acoustics. Here’s how our professionals here at Planning Interiors like to do it.

Use Soft Furnishings

Integrating upholstered chairs, benches, cushions, rugs, and sofas into your office’s interior design will do a world of good for your office acoustics. Soft, padded materials – especially those that combine wood and textiles – naturally absorb sound. In addition, canvas art, curtains, and material pin boards can also help a lot with sound reduction. Moreover, we strongly recommend finding acoustic lights and felt lamps to reduce sound reverberation.

Add in Plant Life

While there are numerous therapeutic and psychological benefits to having plant life in your office space, there are also other benefits – plants naturally reduce noise through sound absorption. Wood flooring, leafy plants, and even branches all naturally absorb sound. Rough bark and thick, fleshy leaves are particularly good at absorbing sound due to their versatile surface area. Thus, we highly recommend incorporating plant like into your office space whenever and wherever you can! Get creative with it, too – plants can be used as privacy screens and even wall décor.

Install Sound Absorption Panels

Sound absorption panels can be a subtle, budget friendly option to consider when you’re on the hunt for better office acoustics – most especially for conference rooms and private offices. These panels are typically made from mineral wood and foam, which both help soundproof your spaces. You can also add sound absorption panels to loud spaces to hold noise in, and to quiet spaces to keep stray noises away.

Add Noise to Control Noise

Surprisingly enough, adding ambient sounds like nature recordings, coffee shop ambiance, or even light music can drown out the hustle and bustle office sounds and replace them with a unifying noise throughout the space. However, before implementing this, we highly recommend speaking with your employees about their preferences – some people work best in total silence while others thrive with ambient sounds in the background.  

Atlanta Commercial Interior Design Experts

At Planning Interiors, we’ve worked with commercial business clients who own companies of all shapes and sizes to produce stunning results. Whether you’d like to strengthen the acoustics of your boardroom or your entire office building, our design experts know how to do it with finesse, precision, and efficiency. Give us a call at 678.732.3946 or email us at danderson@planning-interiors.com for more details on how to transform your office into a more productive, attractive, and all around BETTER environment!