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Noise may seem like a nuisance, but there’s actually much more to it than that. According to “Noise: a public health problem” published in the journal “Nature” in February 2025, excessive noise damages much more than our hearing; it plays a role in health conditions like hypertension, cardiovascular disease, mental health problems, and cognitive and learning impairments.
The problem with noise in the workplace is something we publicised often at Leesman. The data repeatedly showed employee dissatisfaction with noise levels has the biggest negative impact on an individual’s sense of personal productivity, and organisations are struggling to sell employees on why they should leave the comfort and control of their homes behind and head to the office, where in a video-first world of communication and collaboration, the open office is louder and even less conducive to a head-down day of work.
A long-time Aéto ally in trying to raise awareness around the topic is sound expert, Julian Treasure. A former professional drummer, Treasure has conducted extensive research on the impact of sound on how we act, feel and work. He’s found that sound affects every human being in four powerful ways, most of which we are unconscious of.
The first is physiological – sound changes how our bodies work. Treasure explains “If I dump you in a nightclub with 130 beats per minute dance music at 120 decibels, your heart rate will accelerate instantly. If a car backfires behind you, you will get a fight-or-flight response: your heart rate increases, your breathing goes up, fatty acids enter your bloodstream, you get ready to do something about it…so sound is changing our bodies all the time.” But equally sound can have a calming effect. Think of the sound of a gentle surf rolling across a beach or the beauty of birds chirping. Nature sounds can reduce stress and anxiety, improving mental wellbeing. They trigger a rest-and-digest response, which helps the body relax.
Treasure found the second way sound affects us is emotionally, with music being the most obvious example of that. We can play happy songs or sad songs, either of which can change our feelings or reinforce them. But it isn’t only music that changes our feelings – the sounds of nature again impact our emotions. Treasure cites a project at the Sound Agency where they installed birdsong and included artwork of sunflowers on the walls in some BP service station toilets, and in doing so increased customer satisfaction by 50%.
The third way sound affects us is cognitively by impacting how well we can think. Treasure isn’t shy to call out the challenge noise presents in open plan offices.
Research by the British Journal of Psychology has found that a noisy workplace can reduce productivity by up to 60%. Treasure refers to the lack of quiet working space as a “crisis”, especially for neurodivergent individuals.
The fourth way sound changes us is behaviourally – it changes what we do. Treasure cites a study done at a UK supermarket selling French and German wines of a similar type and price point displayed next to each other. Over a two-week period, the supermarket alternated between playing stereotypical French and German music. When the French music was playing, French wine outsold German wine more than three to one. Given the popularity of French wine, these results may not be particularly surprising. However, when the German music was playing, German wine outsold French wine nearly three to one, with most buyers indicating that the music didn’t influence their choice of wine
Treasure explains this phenomenon: “It’s an unconscious response to a sound condition that’s not even perceived by the cortex [the outer layer of the brain responsible for most of our information processing], so somewhere there’s an association that takes place and our behaviour changes.” Sound changes behaviour in other less subtle ways, too. Violence and war are generally associated with loud noise. “You don’t get many armies charging where they’re not screaming at the top of their voices,” Treasure points out. It can disturb us and make us more aggressive, less social, less sociable and less helpful.
Despite multiple studies citing similar outcomes, Treasure is perplexed why architects typically study for up to seven years to obtain their degree but in that time spend between one and five days on acoustics. “They design entirely for the eyes; they forget the ears altogether,” according to Treasure.
As important as sound is, we don’t experience the senses in isolation. Studies have shown that noise in restaurants impacts our ability to taste sugar and salt. Treasure has a simple explanation for this change, stating “If you overload one sense, it degrades the performance of the others.”
But the senses can all work in concert beautifully together. If you have a nature image on a wall, the image is so much more powerful if you add sound to the experience, and even more so if you add fragrance, the right lighting and perhaps a tactile element.
The experience becomes immersive, which is where superadditivity comes in: 1+1+1 doesn’t equal 3; it can equal 10.
“You’ve got to think about all the senses in the round and get congruent,” Treasure says. “We go through life being buffeted by these turbulent currents and just unaware of why we are feeling so stressed, fatigued, unhappy, angry, whatever it may be. Why did we make that decision? Sound has a lot to do with all of that.” Treasure has advised airports, railway networks, local authority carpark managers and shopping centre operators on the impact of sound but is rarely invited in to speak with office designers or managers. “What more evidence do they need?” he wonders.
Our knowledge of the impact noise has on productivity and a shift in employee behaviours post-pandemic has resulted in a heightened awareness of noise in the workplace, evidenced by the plethora of phone and VC booths both on display at workplace and furniture design shows and scattered throughout modern offices. At Aéto, we’re helping clients cut through the noise with our proprietary methodologies for floor plan audits and mystery shopper visits to pinpoint where noise is or will be a problem to engineer the friction out. At the end of the day, employees come to the office to get work done, so it’s in all of our interest to help them do just that.