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Acoustic Solutions
A classroom, an open-plan office and a swimming pool fail acoustically for different reasons — so they are fixed with different build-ups. These are the solutions we specify for each space, with the reverberation targets behind them.
Start from the Problem
Four complaints cover most enquiries. Find yours, then jump straight to the build-up that solves it.
“We can hear each other’s conversations”
Open-plan speech transfer: too little absorption near the ceiling and between desks.
Fix: Ceiling clouds, desk screens and PET wall panels at first-reflection points.
Fix for workplaces →“The room sounds loud and muddy”
Long reverberation: hard parallel surfaces and a high volume with nothing to absorb.
Fix: Class A broadband absorption on ceiling and upper walls, sized to the room volume.
See the targets →“Conversations carry into the next room”
Speech privacy: lightweight partitions, hollow doors and shared ducting.
Fix: Mass layers and damping felt in the partition, plus solid-core acoustic doors.
Damping & doors →“Bass booms in small rooms”
Standing waves between parallel walls — thin panels cannot fix the low end.
Fix: Thick corner absorption, membrane damping and QRD diffusers to break the modes.
Diffuser range →01Workplaces
The complaint is never that an office is noisy in general — it is that you can hear the conversation two desks away. Speech transfer between workstations is a geometry problem, and it is solved by absorption at the ceiling above the desks, not by more glass.
Most fit-outs already have a suspended ceiling; the build-up below mixes clouds over bench clusters with absorption on the slab where the soffit is exposed. Meeting and focus rooms get wall panels at first-reflection points so calls stay inside the room.
02Education
Reverberation is the reason a teacher has to raise their voice. In an untreated classroom each syllable overlaps the next, and intelligibility collapses with every metre from the front — the ceiling is where most of that is recovered.
Classrooms and lecture rooms take ceiling absorption sized to BB93 targets; sports halls and workshops need impact-resistant wood wool instead of felt; music rooms and corridors take printed PET panels that double as wayfinding.
03Hospitality & Retail
In a full restaurant the problem is competing conversation: hard surfaces everywhere, no soft furnishings, guests leaning closer and raising their voices. The panels also have to carry the interior design — which is why wood and printed finishes dominate here.
Dining rooms take absorption where guests cannot see it — ceilings and upper walls — while feature walls stay decorative. In hotels the same systems cover lobbies and private dining; in flagship stores they cut the noise of a busy fit-out without touching the brand palette.
04Healthcare
Speech privacy is the requirement that matters most: a patient describing symptoms two metres from the next chair should not be intelligible to anyone else. That needs absorption at the ceiling and on partitions, with faces that survive clinical cleaning.
Consulting rooms take wipeable fabric-wrapped panels; waiting areas get ceiling absorption sized for low-level conversation; treatment rooms pair wall absorption behind the desk with solid-core acoustic doors so discussions stay inside the room.
05Sports & Pools
Sports halls are the hardest environment we supply: hard floor, hard walls, high volume, ball impact and — in pools — constant humidity. Felt does not survive here; mineral-based panels and metal ceilings do.
Walls take cement-bonded wood wool for impact resistance; pool halls switch to perforated aluminium ceilings that shrug off moisture; above the action, vertical baffle arrays absorb where a flat ceiling cannot reach.
06Performance Spaces
Performance rooms need the opposite of a quiet office: controlled reflections, even diffusion and a decay time tuned to the use — 1.0–1.2 s for speech, 1.4–1.8 s for music, near-anechoic conditions in control rooms.
Auditorium walls combine grooved and perforated wood for broadband absorption with QRD diffusers to keep the rear of the hall alive. Studios are built as rooms within rooms — isolation first, then absorption and diffusion inside.
Design Targets
Where each space should land, what usually goes wrong, and the systems we reach for first.
| Space | Typical problem | What we specify | Design target RT60 | Browse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workplaces & offices | Overheard speech between desks | Ceiling clouds, desk screens, PET wall panels | 0.4–0.6 s | PET Felt & Fabric Baffles |
| Classrooms & lecture rooms | Teacher strain, poor intelligibility | Ceiling tiles in the grid, printed PET on walls | ≤ 0.6–0.8 s | Mineral & Fibre Wood Wool |
| Restaurants & hotel lobbies | Competing conversation as the room fills | Wood slat walls, fabric panels, ceiling absorption | 0.6–0.9 s | Wood Fabric Wrapped |
| Retail & showrooms | Loud fit-out, hard finishes | Discreet absorption behind feature finishes | 0.6–0.8 s | PET Felt Sandstone |
| Clinics & care homes | Speech privacy, cleanability | Wipeable fabric panels, hygienic ceiling tiles | 0.4–0.6 s | Fabric Wrapped Ceiling |
| Sports halls & pools | Long decay, impact and humidity | Wood wool walls, perforated metal ceilings, baffles | 1.5–2.0 s | Wood Wool Metal |
| Theatres & auditoriums | Echo, uneven reflections | Grooved wood, perforated panels, QRD diffusion | 1.0–1.8 s | Wood Diffusers |
| Studios & cinemas | Isolation, flat low-frequency response | Room-in-room build-ups, damping, diffusion | 0.2–0.4 s | Diffusers Doors |
| Transport & public halls | Crowd noise under hard ceilings | Robust metal and mineral ceilings, wall absorption | 1.0–1.5 s | Metal & Aluminium Mineral & Fibre |
Targets are design guides for typical occupancy, drawn from BB93, DIN 18041 and BS 8233 practice. Final values should be confirmed for your project — we run the calculation for you as part of every quotation.
How We Specify
One engineer follows your space from first drawing to container loading — the acoustic calculation is included, not an extra.
A plan, dimensions and ceiling height — or just photos and what the space is used for. That is enough to start.
RT60 per octave band for your existing surfaces, checked against the target for the space type.
Panel, fixing, cavity and coverage written up as a specification, with free A4 samples in 7 days.
Shop drawings, container loading plan and installation guidance, factory-direct to your port.
Most real projects do not fit one template. Send us the section drawing and how the space is used — we will combine systems, design a custom build-up where needed, and quote within 24 hours.
Send the floor area, ceiling height and what the room is used for. We will come back with the build-up, the square metres of treatment needed and the absorption data behind it.
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