Why do we need to control the sound in a room? It is majorly to avoid sound from reflecting and bouncing back on the surrounding surfaces like the walls and ceiling. Just imagine a classroom where the teacher’s voice keeps echoing and creating background noise, it will affect the hearing and understanding aspect in the classroom, and the same will hold for a courtroom.

Simply put, the theory behind sound reduction is to work on three aspects: reverberation time, background noise and sound transmission.

What are the solutions?

• Acoustic walls: Reverberation is the time taken for a sound to decay by 60 decibels after the source stops. This happens due to the multiple times the sounds reflects on various surfaces in the room. And that is where you need to install acoustic wall and ceiling panels to help reduce unwanted noise.

• Porous surfaces: When sound hits a dense surface and reflects, it gets altered and even distorted, which ruins the effect of the original sound and makes understanding difficult. It ends up creating unwanted background noise. Making available surfaces like the walls and ceiling more porous can reduce this reflection process.

Doing it artistically

Acoustical design is mandatory in all rooms where the travel of sound is of utmost importance, like the classrooms, courtrooms, auditorium, theaters, meeting rooms to mention a few. Adding acoustical panels need not have boring solutions. The acoustical panels you add either to the walls or ceilings, now come in creative and beautifully textured designs.

There are decorative wood panels for classrooms that will give your classroom a touch of fun while you can opt for elegant ceiling panels in courtrooms. On the other hand, artistic acoustic panels can decorate the walls of an auditorium or you can use these creative wooden panels for your own room to improve the acoustics of your home theatre.

What steps to take before installing?

When installing your ceiling panels, remember that planning it out is important, plus:

• Avoid having uneven arrangement or small border pieces – this will give space for sound leakage.
• Do not allow the center lines (length and width) with the edge of the panels.
• Use a graph paper to scale and plan the arrangement of the panels before beginning work.

Acoustical ceiling panels are not only for noise control purposes, but also serve as a great thermal insulator. This will also help you to cut down on the cooling or heating costs.