The best part about an open floor plan is all the light and open space you get. However, all that light and open space is completely opposed to any sense of privacy and an office space needs to have some private area, e.g. for meetings, brainstorming sessions, conference calls, or just to lay back without judgement. However, a glass partition is a great way of creating private spaces in an otherwise open floor plan. Here are some advantages of using glass walls in offices.
1. Glass Walls Can be Moveable
If you set it up right, you can fit your office with movable glass walls. That will help you with a flexible floor plan. You can create closed spaces for whatever application, whenever you want. For example, if you have a presentation with a large number of clients, then you can reconfigure the space to accommodate them all, or if you want to have a private meeting with a handful of people, then you configure your space accordingly. Moveable glass walls are extremely advantageous to the office space and their configuration is minimally invasive and does not interrupt the flow.
This also leaves room for building owners and management from worrying about having to reposition the entire office for new tenants, as the floor plan remains flexible for almost any use case.
This improves on the idea of traditional partitions, as they are not designed to be moveable. So having flexible workspaces is a valuable capability to have.
2. Acoustics
One thing most closely associated with open workspaces is that when people have conversations, even if in a remote corner of the office, some amount of that sound will travel to parts of the office that might not want to be part of the conversation.
Another problem with an open-plan workspace is that there is nothing that can absorb sound, so there will be a lot of unwanted echo. This creates for a distracting environment to say the least. However, to overcome that obstacle, you can install glass walls.
While glass walls aren’t exactly sound dampeners, they do muffle the sound enough over distances that they needn’t bother those not within earshot.
You don’t even need to install a full scale partition, anything even halfway up will go a long way in suppressing the overall audio.
3. Low-cost remodeling.
Perhaps you feel like remodeling your commercial space’s interior design, perhaps a client has requested something specific that requires some reshuffling, or maybe you’re expanding your human resource and they need more space to work. Installing drywall, or panelling is going to be a costly undertaking that will affect the overall space. Anything you do is either going to be permanent or unsightly and both those routes will cost you one way or another.
However, if you take the option to install glass panels, your costs are significantly reduced as it does not require in-house maintenance, can easily be removed, and the only on-site maintenance requires cleaning it. Even if it breaks, there will not be any ugly repair marks, you’ll just replace the entire glass at the fraction of the cost of replacing an entire wall.
Not to mention you save on the lighting as the sun takes care of most of your illumination needs.
4. Aesthetically pleasing workspace.
There is no denying that a glass wall will only add to the beauty of an office space as it is minimally invasive and does not interfere with the decor in any way. Whatever layout you had in mind for your commercial building, a glass partition wall will only add to the sophistication. It doesn’t break the line of sight, while remaining significantly private. Drywall has to be torn out and reinstalled anytime a new layout is desired, however a glass, fixed or portable, will never interfere with the visual aesthetic and can be adjusted. Besides, no matter the theme, a glass partition/wall will always complement, never clash.
Additionally, if employees or management wishes to decorate the office, you can add all manners of textures to the stained glass, you can personalize the glass walls for individual spaces, and the wiring is inherently invisible and that makes for a highly aesthetic design.
5. Nothing permanent, saves on deposits
The biggest setback with any physical location is that there are deposits, or downpayments required to get an office space going. A building owner or manager will acknowledge that any time an office space is emptied it will incur a sizable undertaking in making it habitable again. However, with glass partitions the cost comes down significantly as no unnecessary amount of paint is required, nor do you need to tear down anything and damage the floors in the process. Glass you can replace without even having to move the carpet.
Assuming you picked high quality materials to begin with, you might not even have any need to replace the glass either. This saves costs for both building owners, as well as business operators in management and usage.