A classroom is a place where focus is critical, making sound management incredibly important for students and educators alike. Here is how your classrooms can benefit from acoustical ceiling tiles.
How Coustical Ceiling Tiles Can Help Classrooms
What Are Acoustical Ceiling Tiles?
Acoustic ceiling tiles are an important tool in a room’s cohesion. You’ve likely seen them many times before in places like lobbies, theaters, and office buildings without realizing their incredible usefulness. The purpose of these ceiling tiles is to absorb sound and prevent its transmission. Typically, acoustic ceiling tiles are made from compressed fiberglass, but they can also be constructed of other materials like metal and wood. Acoustic ceiling tiles are given an absorption coefficient rating, and anything over .75 is considered adequate for most rooms. By absorbing sound rather than reflecting it, echoes are reduced, and the transmission of noise to and from other rooms is prevented. The absorption also helps prevent sound from transmitting throughout a room, which is especially helpful in busy rooms with many conversations happening at once.
Why Sound Matters in Classrooms
Why do schools use acoustic ceiling tiles? In a room without acoustic ceiling tiles, small group chatter among students can become a roar in a matter of moments. The acoustics of a room like a classroom can be messy. Think of the last time you tried to have a conversation in a room with a dozen other conversations going. Everyone is raising their voices to talk over the other conversations. This sound transmission can lead to noisy chaos during group work or homeroom, but acoustical ceiling tiles can help prevent that. Classroom ceiling tiles can also help to prevent noise transmission from other rooms nearby. If one class has a movie or music playing but another is trying to focus on quiet reading, that sound bleed can be majorly disruptive. Acoustic ceiling tiles in both rooms can prevent distraction and ensure that every room can be used however it’s needed. When you’re selecting an acoustic tile ceiling, the options can be a bit overwhelming. There are dozens of varieties of tiles, each with different manufacturers and absorption coefficient ratings.
Classrooms of every type benefit from the use of acoustic ceiling tiles. Whether it’s a music room, an auditorium at a college, or your homeschool classroom, acoustic tiles can ensure a comfortable learning environment for your students. Schools should be dampening sound from the outside as well as the noise going on in their classrooms. Things like traffic, planes, and street chatter can all lead to distractions in a room. Acoustic ceiling tiles work to prevent the transmission of this noise as well and are often required in many states’ education laws. Studies have shown that even relatively quiet ambient noise can be a distraction to students, lowering standardized testing scores. While you might be tempted to attempt the installation of acoustic tiles yourself, it’s highly recommended that it’s performed by professional contractors. Improper installation can greatly harm their efficacy, so it’s a job best left to the pros.
Acoustic tiles can be installed with efficiency by the experts at Ozburn-Hessey. If you’re local to the Nashville area and need improved sound in your classroom, home, or business, don’t hesitate to give us a call for a free consultation and estimate today.
