In a small office, noise is rarely loud. It is the conversation at the next desk, a chair scraping on a hard floor, a phone call that fills the whole room. In clinics and practices it matters even more: some words should stay behind a closed door.
Why small rooms sound louder
Glass, plaster, tiles and concrete look clean, but they reflect sound. In a small room with hard surfaces, every word lingers a moment longer than it should. Speech becomes harder to follow, people raise their voices and the day gets more tiring. Good office acoustics rests on three things: absorbing sound inside the room, insulating it from the rooms next door, and a layout that keeps noise and quiet apart.
Absorb: soften the surfaces
Soft, porous materials absorb sound instead of throwing it back. The ceiling is usually the largest free surface, so that is where to start.
- Acoustic ceiling panels or baffles, in felt, wood wool or fabric.
- Wall panels in fabric, felt or timber slats with an acoustic backing, where people sit and talk.
- Rugs, upholstered chairs and curtains, which soften a room while they furnish it.
- Full bookshelves and open shelving, which break up sound as well as absorb it.
As a rule of thumb, treating around a third of a room’s surfaces already makes a clear difference. In the Webartstudio offices in Polygono, a wave of navy baffles across the double-height ceiling keeps the open office calm and becomes the room’s signature at the same time.
Insulate: keep conversations in the room
Sound escapes through the weakest point, usually the door or a gap you cannot see.
- Solid-core doors, with seals all round and an automatic drop seal at the bottom.
- Partition walls that go all the way up to the slab, not only to the false ceiling, in double plasterboard with mineral wool.
- Laminated acoustic glass in glass partitions and meeting rooms.
- Sealed openings around ducts, sockets and pipes: where air passes, sound passes.
Plan the layout around quiet
The cheapest silence is the one you plan. Place the quiet rooms, such as consultation, therapy and meeting rooms, away from the reception, the kitchen and the WC. Use storage, cupboards and corridors as buffers between them. Keep the waiting area away from consultation doors, and let soft background music cover the voices that carry.
Clinics and therapy rooms: privacy is part of care
In a doctor’s or a therapist’s practice, speech privacy is part of the trust between people. The next client should never hear the session before theirs, and everyone should feel free to speak. In the psychologist’s office we designed in Athens, the aim was a calm, warm room where the conversation stays between two people.
A quick check of your own space
- Clap your hands: if you hear a fluttering echo, the room needs absorption.
- Hard floor? Add rugs, and felt pads under the chairs.
- Can you see light under the door? Sound gets through there too.
- Where are the printer and the coffee machine? Move them away from the desks.
Designing a new office, a clinic or a practice, or want to make yours quieter? Tell us about it in a Personalised Proposal.
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