DeltaAcousticScreens | Rap Industries Ltd

As the popularity of an open plan office continues to grow, there are a variety of practical issues which many businesses neglect when beginning to design the office layout. Factors such as colour choices and acoustic control have a significant impact on the productivity of staff, despite the effects not being immediately obvious. Office design needs to create a comfortable environment which helps people to concentrate and while huge rooms with clean white walls and amazing hardwood floors look great, they are a horrible space to work in. In particular, when deadlines loom, the constant clacking of that beautiful oak floor can become unsurprisingly infuriating.

Many interior designers will now advise you based on acoustic as well as aesthetic design, but if you don’t have the budget to commission one, then it’s important to take note. While the overall look of your office has obvious benefits, it is the practical elements which need to be at the heart of the design. If you choose to have an open office layout, then you will be hoping to work towards a dynamic environment which allows relationships to flourish and creativity to flow. However, no team is perfect and over time as staff continue to work in the same space, gripes can begin to emerge and the environment which began as a great collaborative workspace can transform into a room full of tension.

One major element which contributes to this is sound, whether it is in conversations from across the room, phones ringing throughout the day or even just the sound of footsteps walking past you, these can all destroy your focus and concentration. To remedy this, many office designs now incorporate acoustic foam as well as more heavy duty materials which are tasked with absorbing ambient noise. A common misconception with acoustic foam is that it will be able to block out sound altogether, however, due to the way that soundwaves work, this would take such a meticulous and expensive design that you would probably be better off having multiple private offices.

Sound feels quite linear as our ears seemingly instantly detect the sound. However, the source of where that comes from is the result of vibrations causing the sound wave to go from the original source to our ear drum. For example, when someone is speaking to you, the sound causes vibrations in the air which bounce all around you. To interpret these, when the sound waves reach our ear drums, they cause them to vibrate. Initially these would be unintelligible such as if someone was trying to speak to you from far away. However, the louder the person speaks, the greater the vibrations are on the ear drum, which the brain can then interpret to understand the meaning.

So basically, as long as the sound is loud enough to cause our ear drums to vibrate, our brain instinctively begins to decipher the sound. For our ancestors, this would be fantastic as a warning system for oncoming predators. However, in an open office environment, it means that heated conversations, phones ringing and shoes stomping, all cause us to lose concentration. The reason that we don’t pick up absolutely every sound is because as the sound wave bounds off in every direction, they lose energy rapidly and once this runs out, the sound dissipates.

This is why it is crucial to integrate acoustic control into the office design, as while you will never be able to block out sound altogether, you can create an environment which helps to dissipate soundwaves and help people to concentrate. Simple additions such as carpets are great for absorbing noise, but more advanced solutions such as acoustic screens are fantastic at stopping the sound at the source. Here at Rap Industries, we have developed the Delta Acoustic Screens for this very purpose. Featuring a vibrant and modern design which is combined with innovate acoustic foam, these provide a very effective way of absorbing ambient noise in the office.

If you would like to know more about how Delta Acoustic Screens can help your open office environment, then please feel free to get in touch by calling 01733 394941 or by sending an e-mail to sales@rapind.com.

For modern interior design, the focus falls on transforming spaces into aesthetically pleasing open offices which encourage collaboration and teamwork. The traditional cubicle style has evolved drastically in recent history into hubs designed towards bundling teams together to work towards the collective goal. But while these environments are pleasing on the eye, the practicality of them is often limited as they often do more to hinder teamwork than they do to encourage it. Wherever we are, we use all of our senses to absorb our surroundings and something we often neglect is sound. Whether we are sat alone in a room or in a bustling train, sound can have a seriously detrimental impact on us.

This is especially the case in open office environments where phones are ringing constantly throughout the day and the inescapable earworm of your neighbour chatting away persists. For many workers, the biggest disturbance at work is overhearing the conversations of others and no matter how much we may try to ignore them, we always passively concentrate on what is being said, regardless of how mundane it may be. Studies have shown that disturbances such as these can occupy up to two thirds of the attention that we can muster, leaving very little room to concentrate on the work at hand.

Constant disturbances can be frustrating at the time, but when left to linger, they can foster a range of mental and health implications. When deadlines are approaching, having to listen to your neighbour discussing their plans for the weekend can aggravate stress levels. If this is the case for one member of staff, then you can be pretty sure that it is common amongst the majority of the workforce as well. In the end, what began as frustration, can lead to increased absenteeism and bouts of sickness as noise levels continue to spiral.

The answer fortunately, is not to condemn your office to complete silence. While tricky, the key component of office design is to create an acceptable level of ambient noise. This allows conversations to continue, but adds a degree of control to distort sound and removes that impossible allure of listening in to what others have to say. Eradicating conversations altogether merely creates an oppressive environment, which defeats the whole point of the open office in the first place. For example, blood pulses will only continue to boil when a phone call does have to be made and the whole office has the pleasure of listening in.

Employing an interior designer to take these concerns into consideration can be an expensive option, but there is still plenty you can do, especially if you have a smaller office to contend with. Neat tricks such as blindfolding yourself and picking out areas where noise peaks can allow you to identify places where acoustic control is required. An important factor to recognise is that sound bounces off of hard surfaces, so unfortunately hardwood floors are incredibly impractical for your offices. This also means that adding soft surfaces such as carpets as well as padding on the walls and ceiling, are incredibly effective at soaking up ambient office noise.

An alternative to those is to invest in acoustic partition screens which combine acoustic absorbent foam with a stylish design to help confine conversations to each desk while contributing to the overall design of the office. At Rap Industries, we manufacture the Delta Acoustic Screen which incorporate this vibrant design and each screen can be tailor made to adapt to each office environment.

The benefits of managing to keep volume levels under control can be subtle, but you are certainly more likely to notice the negatives when the noise becomes unbearable. Failing to keep a lid on things can lead to it spiralling out of control as employees clamber to speak over each other, so it is pivotal to keep a track of levels, especially as your business continues to grow. If you would like to learn more about how the Delta Acoustic Screens can help to contain ambient office noise in your workplace, then please give our team of advisors a call on 01733 394941 or send them an e-mail to sales@rapind.com.

Free standing acoustic screens with a two tone fabric finish