How to create a better office environment with furniture, supplies, and products

This summer at NeoCon in Chicago it was determined that open office plans appear to be the wave of the future. But that means that most offices are in need of some extra acoustical help.

According to a recent survey by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) 70% of office workers felt that in order to increase productivity the office noise needs to be cut down to size.

Some easily eliminated issues:

• Speaker phone calls
• Creating a separate area all together to take long (or meeting) calls.
• Private music listened to with earphones vs. tiny radios.

One major office adjustment:

Flooring choice: This is one of the number one issues to address when looking to cut down on extra office noise. While flooring alone cannot reduce all the extra noise it can reduce a lot but only the right kind of flooring.

ASID reports that carpet with integral polyurethane cushioning has great noise reducing ability. In fact it can be 25% more effective at noise reduction that carpet without the cushion.

• All Noise Control offers a website full of good choices for commercial products meant to reduce noise; including quite a few flooring options.
• Acoustics.com offers a great article on how to control noise within a space. Office spaces included.
• Take a look at Daltonian Flooring – flooring with some awesome acoustic and green qualities.

It’s an important topic – as office spaces open up and we stuff more people into smaller spaces noise control is becoming a huge factor at the office. That said; more to come soon related to improving noise in the office.