Imagine going into a therapy session, and you can hear people talking through the walls in adjacent rooms. If you plan to be a therapist for very long, it’s just not an acceptable situation. Privacy is required, and even lower level distractions can make a session less productive.

We break down unwanted noise in a therapist’s office into two categories:

1. MUST FIX: If you have room-to-room noise where adjacent rooms can make out what’s being said on the other side when speaking at a normal level, the noise problem has to be solved. The rooms require better soundproofing.
    
2. RECOMMENDED TO FIX: If the room-to-room noise is loud enough that people can make out noise, but can’t understand what’s being said – we would still recommend a fix to avoid distractions. Additional soundproofing materials will also prevent any sounds from being too noticeable if the noise level rises above a regular speaking voice.

We understand that solving these problems in a commercial building where you are a tenant is not always easy, and can require working with the landlord. We have a variety of solutions depending on your building’s specific constraints, and will make sure any soundproofing you do install will actually work.

1. If you have a dropped ceiling, check if the walls go all the way to the true roof or stop where the dropped ceiling starts. In most cases, you need to upgrade your ceiling tiles.
   
2. Seal up any gaps in the wall with acoustical sealant. Common weak points are behind the plastic base molding, outlets, and light switches.
   
3. Make sure you have a solid core door and then soundproof it with our adjustable door seal kit.
   
4. Install an appropriate number of acoustic panels inside the room to absorb some of the noise inside. Acoustic panels or foam will not stop sound from entering or exiting the room, but are a helpful final step after completing steps 1 through 3.

There are three main areas of a room to focus on when it comes to soundproofing a therapist's office: the walls, the door, and the ceiling. If there are windows letting outside noise into the room, we would recommend treating those as well.

Let’s take a quick detour here though, and talk about foam. We have run into plenty of professionals who attempt to solve their room-to-room noise issue with acoustic panels or acoustic foam. This approach never works, because foam will not prevent sound from entering or exiting the room. We have a whole article on how foam doesn’t block sound if you’d like to go deeper.

Step #1: Soundproof a Dropped Ceiling in a Therapist Office

A big problem in the types of commercial buildings a therapist office is in is the ceiling, specifically a dropped ceilings. The problem with a dropped ceiling is that the walls of the room typically do not go all the way to the “true” ceiling above – they stop where the ceiling tiles are. Because your typical ceiling tiles block sound about as well as a piece of cardboard, the sound in one room is going right up over the wall and into the adjacent room.

Option 1: Install Ceiling Tiles That Are Rated To Block Sound

Standard dropped ceiling tiles are not good at blocking sound. To block sound through a dropped ceiling, you need to install soundproof dropped ceiling tiles or CelluZorbe™ HD ceiling tile backers. BlocknZorbe™ ceiling tiles are STC rated to block sound, and can either replace existing tiles or be laid on top. CelluZorbe HD Backer Board is an extremely cost-effective ceiling tile backer that can be glued to the existing ceiling tiles, significantly improving the soundproofing performance.

Option 2: Replace With Drywall

Depending on the level of soundproofing you need and the noise level, you may need to consider a drywall ceiling. There might be a few different office noise reduction solutions that would work best for you – please reach out to one of our Second Skin noise experts to discuss further options!  

Step #2: Soundproofing Therapist Office Walls

The walls of a room are the primary barrier separating two rooms. In a commercial building, the most common problem we see with walls is that they are not well sealed. Sound behaves a lot like water, it finds the weakest point and travels through that opening. If a wall is not properly sealed, sound will “leak” into adjacent spaces.

If you can see obvious gaps in the wall, you need to seal them. Gaps that aren’t so obvious need to be sealed as well. The most common ones are behind the plastic base molding and any penetrations in the wall (outlets, switches, etc).

Depending on the situation, we may sometimes recommend going beyond sealing up the wall with Green Glue and an additional layer of 5/8” drywall. In most situations though, we just need to use acoustical sealant to seal gaps in the wall and upgrade the soundproofing of the dropped ceiling tiles.

Step #3: Door Soundproofing for Your Office Door

The door of a therapist's office is a weak point in the wall. Even if the wall is properly soundproofed, there will still be a good amount of sound transmission if you don’t treat the door.

First, check that the door is a solid core door and not a hollow core door. If it's a hollow core door, rip it off immediately and send it far away! Hollow core doors don’t have the density to block sound. Fortunately, most offices will already will have solid core doors which are a better starting point for door soundproofing.

A major soundproofing problem area with doors is the gaps around the perimeter. Remember earlier when we said sound flows like water and will find any and every crevice to transfer through? A door can have up to one square foot of airspace around it, so we have to seal that gap! Our Sound Lock Door Seal Kit combines adjustable jamb seals with an automatic bottom seal that drops down when the door closes. The kit will add up to 20 STC points to the door, while allowing the door to operate completely normally!

For loud offices or offices that have a required STC rating, we also sell the most soundproof door for an office.

STEP #4 (BONUS): Improve the office acoustics

This bonus step is a way to make your therapist's office a more relaxed environment. Poor acoustics can drive up stress levels in patients because of the perpetuated reverberation and echoes. That's why it's even more important to improve the acoustics in your therapy office.

By absorbing echoes and reducing reverb within your office, you'll be able to keep stress levels low where it matters most. For spaces with taller ceilings, we have many acoustic baffle options or you can get one of these acoustic clouds for a more out-of-the-way ceiling treatment. If you have a drop ceiling, there is no simpler install than one of our beautiful acoustic ceiling tiles. There is always traditional direct attach acoustic panels that can go on walls or the ceiling.