Office acoustics: what to sort first, and what felt can and can't do.

Before Felted, our founder spent most of a decade running a trade sales team in office interiors. Floor after floor, the same complaint came up. It was almost never phrased as acoustics. It was "we can't hear ourselves think" or "the whole office can hear the client calls".

Nobody asks for office acoustics by name. They ask why the new office feels harder to work in than the old one. This guide is our answer, as plainly as we can put it.

What is office acoustics?

Office acoustics is how sound behaves inside your workspace. How far a voice carries. How long it hangs about. Whether a phone call at one desk turns into everyone's phone call.

Modern offices are built from hard stuff. Glass partitions, plastered walls, concrete or vinyl floors, exposed ceilings. Hard surfaces bounce sound back into the room, a bit like a squash court. Every voice gets a few extra laps before it fades, and the voices pile up on top of each other.

Soft surfaces catch some of that sound before it comes back. Put enough of them in the right places and the room calms down. People talk more quietly without being asked. Calls stop carrying across the floor.

What sound absorbing panels do, and what they don't.

Sound absorbing panels make the room you're in sound better. They don't stop sound passing through a wall, a door or a thin partition. If the problem is that the meeting room next door can be heard word for word through the wall, that's a building job, not a panel job.

What treatment does well is take the edge off the room itself. Less echo, less build-up, less of the sound that escapes in the first place. For most offices, that's where the complaints are actually coming from.

We sell panels, and we'd still tell you that.

The four rooms that cause most of the trouble.

The open plan floor. Open plan was meant to get people talking. It worked. That's the problem. The work that needs long, unbroken concentration gets pushed into meeting rooms, early starts and home days. We've written about what that costs a firm that bills by the hour and what it does to output and accuracy.

The meeting room. Small, glass-walled and hard on every side. A forty-minute call starts to feel like an interrogation, and the conversation leaks into the open plan outside. Most meeting rooms were planned for the firm you were when you moved in. Meeting room acoustics is often where the drift shows first.

The phone floor. Where calls aren't the background but the whole job, every voice competes with every other. We look at the floor that runs on the phone separately.

Everywhere, after the return. Offices aren't really louder than they used to be. We just got used to working somewhere quieter. That's why it suddenly feels like a problem.

What each kind of treatment actually does.

Wall panels. A decorative textured finish for the wall that also soaks up sound. They work best on the hard, flat surfaces that face where people talk. 12mm panels come in 48 colours and 24mm panels in 20, plain or engraved with a pattern. Plenty of firms use them as the feature wall they were going to paint anyway. You'll see them sold as sound reduction wall panels. What they reduce is the echo inside the room, not the sound going through the wall.

Ceiling rafts and baffles. Decorative ceiling features that catch sound before it bounces back down. Rafts hang flat. Baffles hang as vertical blades. They're useful over dense desk clusters and in rooms where the walls are mostly glass. Our guide to the types of acoustic ceiling covers which suits which space. Both are made to order, approx. 10 working days.

Freestanding screens and hanging dividers. These are about visual separation and dividing the floor into zones. A screen won't block sound. What it does is take the busy room out of view, and if you can't see the busy room, it isn't on your mind. The felt faces soak up a little of what bounces around as well. Hanging dividers are 2400 x 1200mm with the pattern cut right through, and come with their wires and ceiling fixing.

Desk screens. Privacy and a defined space at the desk itself. Brackets are sold separately.

How much acoustic treatment does an office need?

Less than most people expect, and in more specific places. You don't need to cover the whole ceiling to make a difference. You need enough coverage in the right spots: the hard surfaces near where people talk, the ceiling above the busiest clusters, the meeting room that's mostly glass.

A room with carpet, soft chairs and a fabric partition is already part of the way there. A glass box with a polished floor is starting from harder ground.

Our acoustics estimator takes the room size, ceiling height and surfaces and gives you a sized starting point in about ten minutes. That turns "we should look at the acoustics" into something specific enough to cost and send to whoever signs off the order.

Fitting it without a fight with the landlord.

Most offices are leased, and most internal walls are partitions. So the fixing matters.

Our fitting guide covers three ways to fix a wall panel: Button-fix, adhesive or pin head nails. Button-fix is the one we'd point a leaseholder to first. It's simple to fit and easy to remove, and the same fixings work on ceilings. Adhesive is the permanent route. Check what your lease says about fixings to walls before you pick.

Panels are a uniform thickness, so an uneven wall shows at the edges. Where the wall isn't flat, levelling battens sort that out. Rafts hang on wires from a plate on their top face, so nothing shows from the floor.

Fire, materials and the boring-but-important bits.

Our 12mm and 24mm felt boards are both Class B-s1,d0 to BS EN 13501-1:2018. The board contains 75% post-consumer recycled content. Products are made in the UK, and every PET felt product carries a 10-year guarantee.

If you want the acoustic figures, they depend on how the panel is mounted, so we set them out with the test conditions in how to read acoustic panel ratings.

Colours on a screen only tell you so much. Our sample pack is £12.95 for up to six A5 swatches, so you can see the colour in the room's own light.

If you're a dealer, specifier or fit-out contractor, send us the project through the contact form and we'll come back to you directly.

Office acoustics FAQ.

Do noise reduction panels soundproof an office?

No. Panels absorb sound inside the room, so it echoes less and carries less. They don't stop sound passing through walls or partitions.

Where should acoustic panels go in an office?

On the hard surfaces near where people talk most, and on the ceiling above busy desk clusters. Meeting rooms with a lot of glass usually benefit from a ceiling feature, because there's less wall to work with.

How many panels does an office need?

It depends on the room size, ceiling height and how hard the surfaces are. Our acoustics estimator gives you a sized starting point.

Can I fit acoustic panels in a rented office?

Usually, yes. Button-fix is simple to fit and easy to remove. Check your lease for anything it says about fixings to walls.

Are felt acoustic panels fire rated?

Our 12mm and 24mm boards are Class B-s1,d0 to BS EN 13501-1:2018.

Do acoustic screens block sound?

No. Screens are for visual separation and zoning. Taking the busy room out of view helps people focus, and the felt soaks up a little sound too, but a screen won't stop a voice carrying.