Jasmine Birtles
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Where to start with noise reduction in the workplace
Moneymagpie Team
22nd Dec 2025
A lively workplace is music to the ears of bosses, but the constant aural assault associated with the hubbub of a busy office can be stressful for employees if they’re exposed to incessant noise for prolonged periods.
The good news is that there are clever ways an office can go about keeping noise to a minimum while maintaining that sense of freedom and collaboration that comes with an open-plan workspace.
From noise-cancelling headsets and privacy screens to ceiling baffles and sound-damping furniture, there is a noise reduction mechanism for office spaces of all shapes and sizes.
In this post, we take a closer look at some of these and several other ingenious noise reduction strategies you can use in the workplace.
Phone Headsets
The sound bleed from dozens of phone conversations can be cacophonous in large open plan workspaces, so having people speak directly into a microphone and wear noise-cancelling headphones is an effective way of quickly bringing the decibel level down.
When people feel their voices are being heard by their interlocutor, they naturally lower their voices, meaning that the overall noise level rapidly falls with the introduction of headsets.
A good headset will come with both passive and active noise-reducing characteristics:
- Passive noise isolation: Involves ear cups or buds that block out competing voices and noise in an office.
- Active noise cancelling: Uses technology to process the ambient noise in an office and cancels it so the user can hear clearly.
Acoustic Furniture
A clever way of bringing the noise level down in an office is by selecting furniture fashioned from sound-absorbing materials.
The furniture looks like the regular office equipment, but is manufactured from porous materials with networks of air pockets that vibrate when sound waves hit, the friction converting the sound into heat and dissipating it. This type of furniture can not only look great, but double up by absorbing sound.
The best sound-muffling furnishings include:
- Felt: A dense fibrous material that has natural sound muffling qualities; useful in wall hangings and upholstery.
- Foam: Open-cell foam is especially useful in acoustic furniture like chairs and sofas – the little pockets of interconnected air bubbles in the foam capture the sound waves and convert them into heat via vibration.
- PET: An eco-friendly material sourced from recycled plastic bottles, it has recently found its way into acoustic furniture in the form of panels, as the compressed sheets from which it’s manufactured are great at absorbing sound.
Noise Reduction Coefficient
When shopping around for noise-reducing acoustic furnishings, it’s important to understand the item’s noise reduction coefficient (NRC).
The NRC assigned to a piece of furniture is a decimal value between zero and one and tells you just how well you can expect it to dampen noise.
A rating of zero means a material absorbs no sound at all, while at the other end of the scale, a score of one means the material absorbs nearly all the sound it comes into contact with.
- 0.3–0.5: Moderate sound absorption, usually found in carpets and thin fabric panels.
- 0.6–0.9: High sound absorption found in thick foam, acoustic panels, and mineral wool.
- 1.0: Very high sound absorption that is used in specialised acoustic materials.
Ceiling Baffles
Baffles are another clever way of minimising noise in a workplace, and are especially useful in buildings where space is at a premium, as they are hung from a ceiling or rafters.
A baffle works by essentially ‘grabbing’ ambient sound waves as they zip around a room before they can ricochet off echoey hard surfaces like floors and ceilings.
Modern ceiling baffles are often fashioned from PET felt, which comes from recycled drinking bottles, and typically boasts a high NRC rating – 0.70–0.9 is common.
Acoustic Screens
Acoustic desk screens and privacy screens serve both to reduce the decibels in an office and allow for the removal of visual distractions as a bonus.
Similar to acoustic furniture, screens are heavy-duty pieces of equipment that are perfect for reducing the noise and zoning an office space.
The materials used in screens are similar to the stuff used in acoustic furniture – for example, at Rap Industries, the company’s acoustic screens use double-layered acoustic foam to muffle sound.
Conclusion
The benefits of noise reduction in a workspace speak for themselves.
Research has found that noise isn’t simply an inconvenience or annoyance for many employees – it’s consistently cited as having a big impact on worker productivity and morale.
Disclaimer: MoneyMagpie is not a licensed financial advisor and therefore information found here including opinions, commentary, suggestions or strategies are for informational, entertainment or educational purposes only. This should not be considered as financial advice. Anyone thinking of investing should conduct their own due diligence.
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