Acoustic Treatment for Offices: A Practical Selection Guide
Open plan, meeting rooms and focus pods fail acoustically for different reasons. What to treat in each, and the three numbers worth writing into a specification.
CYC Acoustic Team
CYC Acoustic Panel Specialists
Office acoustics is not one problem. It is three, and they are usually specified as if they were one.
The three office problems
| Space | What goes wrong | Root cause | Where to treat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open plan | Speech from other desks is distracting | Direct line of sight and short-distance speech travel over and between desks | Ceiling (the largest uninterrupted surface), plus screens |
| Meeting rooms | Speech is hard to follow, calls sound hollow | Early reflections off the ceiling and side walls, plus a small reverberant volume | Ceiling above the table first, then upper side walls |
| Focus pods and phone booths | Boomy, tiring, uncomfortable | Small volume with hard parallel surfaces | All available surfaces; the room is too small to be selective |
Why cubicle screens alone disappoint
Screens interrupt line of sight and take the edge off nearby speech, but they leave the ceiling untouched. In most open plan offices the ceiling is the largest hard surface and the single biggest contributor to the noise floor. Treat the ceiling and screens start working as intended; skip the ceiling and screens fight a losing battle.
The numbers worth specifying
- Reverberation time (T60 or RT60) in seconds, for each room type. This is the number that describes how live a space sounds.
- Coverage as a percentage of ceiling area treated, stated with the mounting method used.
- NRC or alpha-w, always quoted with the mounting condition and the test standard. An NRC without a mounting condition is not a specification.
Practical sequence
- Describe the symptom per space, not per building
- Treat ceilings first in open plan and meeting rooms
- Add side-wall absorption in small rooms where the ceiling alone is not enough
- Address background noise separately — HVAC, printers, corridors. Absorption cannot make a noisy system quiet
- Keep a sealed, treated room for confidential calls; this is a construction job, not a panel job
Colour, brand and the design argument
Acoustic treatment is often resisted on visual grounds, as if the choice is between good acoustics and a good-looking office. It is not: felt panels are available in a wide palette and in fluted, flat and shaped profiles, so the acoustic layer can be the feature wall rather than something to hide. Decide the acoustic surfaces early, at the same time as the finishes, and the two budgets stop competing.
What to give a supplier
- Floor plan with ceiling height
- Occupancy per zone and how people work (calls, deep focus, collaboration)
- Existing surfaces: carpet or hard floor, ceiling type, glazing
- Any constraint: lease conditions, no drilling, listed building, service voids
- The room type that is failing worst — start there
If you can send the plan and the complaint, we can suggest surfaces and mounting before suggesting a quantity.