Noise and acoustics

What are acoustics?

Poor acoustics are usually caused by hard room surfaces, which reflect sound. It sounds like the room 'echoes'. A 'hard' room can amplify the effect of unpleasant noise, because noise from one part of the room can spread to other parts, and because the sound takes a long time to 'die out'.

Reverberation time helps quantify an office's acoustics. The reverberation time in a room depends particularly on the materials used for walls, ceilings, floors and doors.

To combat poor acoustics, sound dampening/absorbent materials can be installed—such as office noise partitions, noticeboards, wall art, etc. Please note that these need to be spread around the entire room.

Most common sources of office noise

Noise can be generated within the office, or outside. Common noise sources are:

• general unrest, due to many people working together
• work that requires a lot of communication between people, such as project work and phone conversations
• work which involves noisy equipment, such as IT equipment and printers
• ventilation systems
• noise from colleagues, other offices, passageways, etc.
• outside noise, e.g. traffic

Rules of conduct to draw inspiration from:

• close the doors to rooms in which there is noisy activity
• consider whether your footwear is adding unnecessarily to the noise level
• raise the issue of noisy technical systems
• remember that speaking to colleagues is also 'real work'
• turn down the volume of your telephone's ring tone and make sure to redirect phone calls when you are away
• set mobile phones to silent mode - use vibration instead of an ordinary ring tone
• if you have a cordless phone, remember to take it with you
• use headphones when listening to music
• show consideration for your colleagues
• keep your voice down when speaking