a community of practitioners

Decorating a room

I recently got a massage office. One of the rooms has a bay window but this window has a few problems. 1- of course is light. It lets too much light into the room. 2. it is it also lets too much sound inot the room. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to eliminate or reduce either or both of these?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rajam K Roose on April 18, 2011 at 11:04pm

I have the same issue as my office has a skylight also there are thin walls and hardwood flooring. It is unbelievably bright in my office. My husband helped me drape thick material just under the ceiling to help cut the brightness. Since your light is coming from bay windows, you may want to get some light blocking curtains.

For the sound, you don't want to soundproof your office, but dampen sound. There's a great resource on www.soundproofing.org that gives a lot of helpful info about sound and how it carries. Once you understand how sound carries, you can plan accordingly. In my space, I put in a fountain (which helps create a white noise), have a large screen my husband made to divide the office space, used carpets and have sound dampening curtains underneath draperies on one wall. The sound dampening sheets I got from http://www.audimutesoundproofing.com/Products/Sound-Absorption-Shee...

This may or may not work in your space but I put up a curtain rod on one wall and hung some earth tone green/brown curtains from BedBath&Beyond over the dampening curtains. Sound really travels through windows so I invested in a piece of acoustical foam and mounted it on a backing board and then put that up in the window.

All of the hard work paid off b/c sound stays in my office and it's much harder to hear people walking around and opening and closing office doors. It's also quieter without the traffic noise coming through the window. Not to mention, my office ended up looking very relaxing and peaceful!

If you're interested in how it all turned out, let me know and I'll send you some pic's.