Country Drive Acoustic Art Panel
From $219.00
The hollow sound on video calls
Home offices are usually small rooms with bare walls and a hard floor. Your voice bounces around and the mic picks all of it up, which is why so many people sound like they're calling from a bathroom.
Soft stuff in the room helps: rugs, curtains, a bookshelf full of books. An acoustic panel on the wall helps too, and unlike a foam tile, it doesn't make your office look like a recording booth.
The wall everyone sees
The wall behind your desk is the one your coworkers stare at all day. It's worth putting something good there. Calm, not too busy, nothing that pulls focus from you.
Field Notes and Pressed Leaves were made with this in mind. For a wider wall, Still Water Study is about as calm as art gets, and Fern Shade brings some green into a room that might not get much sun.
A calmer room to work in
It's not just about calls. A room with less echo is just a nicer place to spend eight hours. Typing, the chair creaking, the dog barking downstairs, it all sounds a bit less harsh.
If you have a bigger office or a shared work room, a mural like Birch Grove covers a lot more wall and does a lot more for the sound.
Good places to start
If you're not sure where to begin, these are popular picks for this kind of space: Blueprint Lines, City Lines, Topographic Lines and Cork Board. Each one comes as a single panel or in packs of 4, 8 or 12, so you can do one wall or the whole room.
Questions people ask
Will acoustic panels soundproof my room?
No, and anyone who says so is stretching it. Acoustic panels absorb sound inside the room, so there's less echo and it sounds softer and calmer. They won't stop noise coming through the walls from the neighbours. For that you need building work, not art.
Where should a panel go in a home office?
Behind you is great for how you look on camera. The wall in front of you, the one you talk towards, usually helps the sound the most. If you can, do both.
Will this make my mic sound better?
It can help, because there's less of your voice bouncing back into the mic. It's one piece of the puzzle though. A rug, curtains and a decent mic all help too.
Do they look like acoustic panels?
No, that's the whole idea. From across the room they look like a piece of art on the wall. You only notice the panel part when you notice the room got quieter.