Making a strong first impression requires careful attention to a variety of factors within a workplace. Picture this: you’re walking into a company’s office for the first time as an interview candidate. You’re excited about the opportunity and think this might be the perfect fit. The staff who greet you are welcoming, the coffee is delicious, and the reception area is beautiful and thoughtfully designed.
As your interviewer walks you back to their office, you pass through the open desk area, and a wave of noise hits you. Conversations overlap, phones are ringing, keyboards are clacking, and someone has a video playing with the volume on—it’s a lot to take in. Suddenly, you might find yourself wondering: Will I really be able to do my best work here?
If so, you’re not alone. A study by Interface Inc. found that 50% of employees across the US, UK, and Australia say noise levels would impact their decision to accept a job, and 5% had even considered leaving their current company because of distracting noise. What can you do if your office has distracting noise?
To answer this question, its essential to understand how sound travels through a space and which acoustic factors are contributing to the overall noise in your space. There are three categories of acoustics that often affect the volume of an environment: direct sound, echoes, and sound transmission.
Direct sound is sound directly from the source, i.e., a person talking. Echoes occur when a direct sound bounces or reflects off of a surface and continues to travel around the room. Echoes can be minimized with acoustic products such as panels, dividers, screens, or baffles. These solutions work by absorbing soundwave energy instead of allowing soundwaves to continuously bounce around the room and cause distractions.
Sound transmission—the last aspect of acoustics that contributes to office noise levels—occurs when sound passes through barriers such as walls. This sound is largely determined by how the building is constructed and the materials used. While echoes can be solved with our offerings that fall within the furniture scope, sound transmission is best addressed by a general contractor. To identify whether the root of your noise problem is echo or sound transmission, your Office Revolution point of contact can walk the site with you and use simple tests, such as the Clap Test (demonstrated here by our partner Mergeworks), to develop personalized recommendations for optimizing your acoustic experience. Our recommendations not only address the acoustic needs of your space, but also ensure every solution harmonizes with your brand identity and design aesthetic, creating an environment that is comfortable and visually inviting.
With partnerships across 400+ furniture and product lines, we can evaluate a wide range of acoustic solutions and select the ones that fit your environment. By supplying both furniture and acoustics, we’re able to take a cohesive and holistic approach—integrating acoustic elements into the overall design while coordinating them with furniture selections, and ensuring complementary forms, materials, and finishes. In some cases, acoustics can even be integrated into the furniture itself.
This approach can be elevated further through the acoustics program offered by our primary manufacturing partner, Teknion. Their program incorporates many of the existing Teknion and Luum fabric lines, providing a rich variety of textures, colors, and patterns. Paired with Teknion and Studio TK furniture, these elements create a cohesive and dimensional design language that carries throughout the space. The result is a unified look that reflects Teknion’s thoughtful approach to both function and design.
Acoustic products can also be incorporated into the design scheme, functioning in a dual role as both artwork and sound management. Our acoustics partners even offer products such as custom panels featuring logos or unique image designs, which can be affixed to walls, hung from ceilings or even incorporated into the furniture as room and desk partitions. Some product lines can also be layered to add dimensionality, such as the Teknion Complements pieces shown below.
Even the simplest shapes can create a powerful impact—transforming a blank wall into artwork that brings both character and purpose to a space. A recent project with Job One showcased this in action. Job One, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping adults with disabilities find meaningful employment, sought better sound control in their community room—a lively hub for crafts, games, movies, and social activities. Our Kansas City team decided to incorporate Ezobord circular tiles in Job One’s brand colors to create a bold, playful mural that would also control the acoustics of the room (rendering shown below). The installation successfully improved the acoustics while bringing energy and identity to the space. Following the renovation, the client shared their appreciation for both the functionality and the visual impact of the design.
We continued our collaboration with Ezobord for Office Revolution’s Kansas City showroom and for a project with Striem, a plumbing fixture manufacturer. Striem sought acoustical solutions for the training room within their open office floor plan. While the expansive space beautifully showcased architectural features—high ceilings, glass walls, metal roofs, and concrete floors—the abundance of hard surfaces amplified echoes throughout the room. To address this, we installed ceiling baffles that preserve natural light and maintain clear sight lines while preventing sound from bouncing off the ceiling. The result was a more comfortable, functional space without compromising the open air feel of the room.
The solutions our Kansas City team delivered exemplify how Office Revolution approaches each project with a consultative mindset—transforming spaces through thoughtfully selected acoustic products. What distinguishes our team is a commitment to true partnership, going beyond procurement to craft solutions tailored to your brand’s unique needs. To explore how our design expertise and workplace assessment services can help you create a space that leaves a lasting impression while enhancing long-term employee satisfaction, we invite you to connect with us here!