Soundproofing With Acoustic Wall Art Panels

In a post-pandemic world, our lives look a little different than they used to. Since so many of us worked from home over the past couple of years, our workplaces have become whatever we made them. For many, that meant a place we could feel more comfortable in. We hung art and surrounded ourselves with things that made us feel good. We worked in comfort. We got accustomed to peace and quiet while we went about our daily tasks. Because of all this, a lot of people are nervous about a return to the office.

Acoustic wall art panels are a great way to take the comforts we designed for our at home work spaces with us into the office. They offer improved visual and audible atmospheres and can be installed quickly and easily. Oh, and did I mention how affordable they are? 

Let’s take a look at how these simple panels can make your office a place people are eager to return to. 

What are acoustic wall art panels?

Acoustic wall art panels are exactly what they sound like they are. These art panels have a dense core constructed with acoustical materials that absorb and deaden the sound in the room. This core is wrapped in porous fabric that looks great and allows sound passage into the panel itself, where waves become trapped, preventing them from returning to the other side of the room.

There are a multitude of ways to soundproof spaces and reduce noise in rooms, but one of the easiest and most effective ways is to hang acoustic panels on your walls and suspend them from your ceilings. You don’t need any special tools, and the panels can be moved and rearranged to suit your needs. They are a great solution for reducing echo and reverberation and are a great way to introduce functional art into any space.

What benefits do acoustic wall art panels provide?

If you’re already considering adding more wall art, acoustic panels are a great way to go. You could go with traditional paintings or prints, but sound absorbing art panels pull double duty by delivering both visual and acoustical benefits. Plus, you can get them at a fraction of the cost of buying art from dealers.

Benefits of adding art to the room

On a purely utilitarian front, it may seem like art serves no purpose in the workplace. You could get by without it. Art isn’t a tool that helps us accomplish any particular task, and it doesn’t perform any tasks for us. So, what purpose does it serve?

A study published by Project Zero and the Harvard Graduate School of Education showed that “respondents believe there are five main ways they are impacted by the art in their workplace: the art promotes social interactions, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making, generally enhances the workplace environment and fosters learning.”

Basically, the reason we hang art in our offices is because art can help keep our emotions in check. We used to soak up the beauty provided by the natural world as a means to this end, but in the modern world, we spend the majority of our time indoors. We need to bring some of that beauty indoors.

Increase visual appeal

Modern construction is pretty plain. We use painted drywall and monochromatic carpeting because it’s cheap and clean looking. It’s efficient, but it doesn’t do anything for our souls. The way we make plain spaces our own is by incorporating artistic elements that excite us, calm us, or remind us of home. Adding visual appeal through the use of panel art combines pretty prints with the added benefit of acoustic control. 

Cultivate calm

It’s hard to spend the majority of our daytime hours indoors and causes a great deal of anxiety in lots of people. Art can help. Calming prints and colors make us feel more at ease in the harsh visual environment of the modern workplace. And while colors are important, textures can improve the landscape just as much.

Soft materials absorb light and sound, and take the edge off the sights and sounds of clicking keyboards and reflected light. Acoustic art panels are a great solution for dealing with both. The sound absorbing art panel fabric that allows sound waves to enter and get trapped can provide similar benefits in the lighting. Light waves reflect off smooth surfaces like a mirror, but choosing non-reflective surfaces in our decor softens the lights in the room a bit.

Reinforce the brand

In the context of the workplace, the decor should reinforce the brand and convey the company culture we are trying to create. Try choosing simple and elegant images that represent the things that are important to your company. If you have a media company, maybe an orange film print fits the bill. If you manage a massage or chiropractic practice, maybe an ocean rainbow is a better fit. Or maybe you prefer to create a piece with your own custom branding and messages. It doesn’t matter what you want. As long as you can create a print file for it, you can print it on acoustic wall art panels.

Benefits of improving your acoustics

If you’ve ever dealt with a loud room, or one with considerable echo, you may have already thought about adding some form of acoustic treatment. Maybe you can do something to keep conversations at a comfortable levels. Maybe you can do something to make your presentations sound better. There are great reasons to take these considerations seriously.

Reduced distractions

Excess noise can decrease productivity in even the most diligent workers. Ever heard someone start rattling off numbers while you are trying to count? It’s the same concept. Acoustic art panels absorb enough of the nonessential noise in the room to allow us to concentrate on our work rather than coworkers’ conversations.

Increased concentration

Exposure to too much unwanted noise has a detrimental effect on our ability to concentrate. All that noise reduces our attention spans and makes it harder to remember things. While these things can be annoying in any part of our lives, they are especially hard to deal with in the workplace. Adding acoustic panel wall art to our interior decorating plans may be the first step toward solving some important problems.

When we aren’t being bombarded by rogue sound waves, we are able to concentrate fully on what we are doing. We are able to be more productive with our time, and we make fewer mistakes. We feel better and look better in our clients’ eyes. The ability to concentrate is crucial, and it’s important to do anything we can to create an environment that helps with concentration rather than hindering it.

Health benefits

It’s a well-documented fact that chronic exposure to noise has adverse effects on our health. When we are constantly distracted by unwanted noise, our brain function decreases. Constant exposure to noise also results in increased stress. Stress not only causes emotional distress, but it can manifest itself in ways that are very real dangers to our physical health as well. Minimizing the noise your workers are exposed to, makes them happier, healthier, and better equipped mentally and physically to excel in what they do.

They’re not only for the office

We’ve spent some time covering some of the reasons acoustic wall art panels are great solutions for the office, but there are lots of other places that can benefit greatly from these wonders of the modern world.

The bedroom

Lots of people like white noise when they are trying to sleep, but for the most part, we don’t want any excess noise in the bedroom when we are trying to drift off. Whether it’s the furnace, the ceiling fan, traffic on a nearby street, or a restless partner, small sounds can have a big impact. Do something about it.

Adding a sound absorbing art panel or two to your bedroom can trap the loud claps caused by your partner’s snoring before they become deafening, meaning you may get a few more hours of restful sleep each night. 

Media rooms

Another great spot for panel wall art is in media rooms and home theaters. The sound matters here, and if you’ve got too many reflective surfaces, you won’t hear your music and movies the way they were meant to be heard. Carefully placed acoustic art panels will make your media sound the way the producers intended.

Gathering spots

Anywhere in your home where you gather with friends and family is a great place to introduce some acoustical materials. When we all get to talking at the same time, our voices bounce off the walls and mingle with other voices in the room’s sonic atmosphere. Reverberation causes them to get louder and louder, and we naturally speak louder to compensate. 

Stop reverberation in its tracks with some acoustic wall art panels that look great, and allow your guests to chat without screaming and hear without straining. The whole crew will experience lower stress levels and have a much more enjoyable time.