The New (Home) Office Noise
It seems that the ubiquitous “corner office” that was the ideal location achievement in many corporations at the turn of the century has a quite different meaning in the year 2021. Many offices today seem to have a view of everything from a suburban back yard or even a home kitchen.
Millions of people have renovated, converted, or annexed their dining room or spare bedroom into a home office, and if the statistics are to be trusted, these new office spaces may become even more commonplace than they are even now.
So what does this have to do with acoustic solutions? After all, shouldn’t a home office be nice and quiet compared to the constant cacophony of noises in a typical cubical farm or office building? The answer is a surprising no, it’s not quieter, it’s just different noises in a different environment.
Instead of a dozen phones ringing, an intercom system, and the gossip talks at the end of the hall, you now have garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, family pets...and maybe still the gossip talks at the end of the hall depending on who’s on the phone after a day at school. Dogs are barking, lawn mowers are rumbling, and the quiet neighborhood you swore you lived in suddenly seems like the center of a three-ring circus.
With the number of jobs moving to at least a partial remote position, if not fully remote, a solution needs to be in place for an ethical level of productivity to continue. Let’s see what Google thinks some ways are to control the noise levels in today’s home office environment:
Use exterior walls in choosing your home office.
Curtains. Thick, heavy curtains.
Buy a white noise machine or fan to drone out the noise
Reinforce your windows.
Earplugs.
...and the best of them all...
Trust time to fix it
So, we can hope for thicker exterior walls to be available in homes and apartments, surround ourselves with thick, heavy curtains, buy a machine that makes noise to drown out other noise, wear earplugs, or quite literally try and wait it out.
You just can’t make that last one up.
With companies rethinking their leases on office buildings, and a work-from-home model that was previously thought unsustainable having proved downright productive, a more realistic view on noise control needs to be considered for the at-home workforce.
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The Good News for Your Home Office
The good news is that the experts in the business of noise control have the answers the remote workforce and their employers need. No, it’s not buying foam panels from everyone's favorite online jungle who’s double-sided tape either won’t work or removes chunks of drywall, and it’s definitely not pretending it will all go away.
In truth it’s the same solutions that businesses use in their offices, adapted quite ingeniously to the home environment. Engineered acoustic foam dividers for desks in a myriad of colors to suit the home’s decor, acoustic panels that can be cut to shapes of all kinds for visual interest, as well as wrapped in sublimated print graphics to disguise as art pieces, movable acoustic screens, noise-dampening wood wall treatments...the list goes on.
Are you are an employer looking for a mass solution for their remote workforce? Perhaps a self-employed business owner who has seen an increase in the daytime noise that isn’t going to go away? Maybe simply a newly remote employee who in proactively looking to better your productivity. Regardless of your situation, the need to work in a productive and sound-controlled environment, and we have the answers to the new home office noises many never realized were there are at our fingertips.
Whether your office is across from the boardroom, has cubicle walls, or is just down the hall from your home kitchen, Gaus Acoustics can help you take the noise out of sound. Give us a call or shoot us an email to get started with a free consultation!