Open plan offices are brilliant for teamwork and hopeless for concentration, and the Sch! range of wall and hanging acoustic screens is the quickest fix we install. These are proper sound absorbing panels, sold singly or as three panel sets, that either fix flat to a wall or hang from the ceiling to soak up the chatter and keyboard noise that hard surfaces fling around a room. If the racket starts at the desks themselves, desktop screens and floor screens deal with it closer to the source.
Choosing an acoustic screen
Wall panels and hanging screens do the same job in different places. Fix the wall version to whichever big flat surface the noise bounces off: the back wall of a meeting room, the plasterboard behind a bank of phones, the glazed corridor everyone complains about. Hanging screens earn their keep out in the middle of the floor, suspended above rows of bench desks where there is no handy wall within reach and the sound just keeps travelling.
Coverage matters more than thickness. One panel takes the edge off a small room, but a big echoey space needs several spread across the worst surfaces, which is exactly what the three panel Sch! sets are for. A rough rule we use on site: stand in the room, clap once and listen. If the clap rings, keep adding panels until it stops. You do not need to tile every wall, just break up the largest bare stretches.
Building out a quieter office
Screens are one layer of the fix. Acoustic baffles hang vertically from high ceilings where wall panels cannot reach, acoustic tiles turn a bare wall into a feature that happens to absorb sound, and privacy booths and pods give video calls somewhere to happen that is not the middle of the office. The full acoustic solutions range collects the lot in one place.
Acoustic screens in Belfast and across Northern Ireland
Office Interior Solutions is a Belfast office furniture company, and acoustics have become a steadily bigger part of what we fit. We supply and install across Belfast, Lisburn, Antrim, Newtownabbey, Bangor, Derry and Newry, delivery and installation are included, and we take the packaging away with us, which with wall panels is more of it than you would think.
Sound problems are hard to describe over email, so do not try. Send us a photo of the room and a note of what it is used for, or ring +44 (0)2890 770019 and talk us through it, and we will tell you honestly how many panels the space actually needs.