Office Sound Booth Foam

Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic impacting us all in various ways, it has brought new ways of working. Where many companies once had dedicated offices where staff attended five days a week, meeting spaces never often posed an issue. With the uptick in remote and hybrid working, we’re now seeing many companies giving up their office leases in favour of co-working spaces shared with other companies. With some shared offices providing dedicated meeting rooms, not all offer such facilities. Many companies are finding themselves hiring a dedicated area within a co-working office, yet they do not have a suitable set-up for conference calls to take place at once.

Working in a loud office is distracting when trying to talk on a call, but preventable background noise can be irritating and seen as unprofessional in some circumstances. There are two acoustic solutions for those working in co-working offices - creating individual freestanding soundproof call ‘booths’ and customisable acoustic foam wall insulation that can be added to the walls of a rented room.

Individual soundproof call booths are suitable for companies with individual staff that deal with many calls all at once. Even in the smallest of spaces, these mini booths can provide the most effective sound insulation and soundproofing to ensure privacy and minimise background noise for all users of the area. These are also typically insulated with Pyrosorb-S class 0 acoustic foam and include small bass traps in the corners of a booth to help control overall noise and reverberation.

The acoustic foam sheets lining the inner sound booth can be in flat chamfered foam panels or convoluted ‘egg box’ foam pieces. Selecting the right foam largely depends on aesthetic preference and the amount of available space inside a call booth. Smaller booths may therefore benefit from using flat panel pieces.

If you want to soundproof larger co-working spaces and meeting rooms for increased privacy, acoustic foam panels can be ordered cut to size. They can also be ordered in the required thickness to fit within a wall cavity, or individual panel pieces can be ordered to be placed on a wall in a small part of the room. It is recommended that acoustic panels 1 inch in thickness are used to dissipate human voices, and panels at least 2 inches thick are used to reduce the impact of music being played.

To reduce echo within a booth or meeting room and ensure sound and speech is always clear, a different type of acoustic foam is required – open-cell sound absorbing foam. This foam helps minimise noise blurred around the room, which is often the result of soundwaves bouncing off hard surfaces and perimeter walls, ceilings, and floors. Without sound-absorbing foam, call booths and meeting rooms will commonly offer poor sound quality for in-person meetings, video calls and other teleconferencing.

Please contact our knowledgeable team for personal guidance on the best soundproofing or sound-absorbing foam solution you require.