Panel AcousticsField notes

Bedrooms and living spaces

1 min readFig. 01 — Acouline Cove wall panels as a feature wall behind a small round table

A room can look finished and still sound wrong. That's usually an echo problem, and it's fixable.

Why modern homes echo

Big windows, hard floors, high ceilings, not much on the walls. It's a great look and a terrible sound. Conversation gets tiring, the TV needs more volume than it should, and the room feels noisy even when it's just two people talking.

Softening a hard room

Our panels absorb sound rather than reflect it. They're rated NRC 0.85, so about 85% of the sound hitting them doesn't come back. You don't need to cover a whole wall. Even a run of panels on one wall, or a few ceiling panels above a living area, takes the hardness out of a room.

Behind a bed

This is one of our favourite uses. A panel arrangement behind a bed works as a bedhead and a feature wall at once. It's warm to look at, it's soft against the wall, and it quietens the room. Pick something calm from the Habitat range like Mist, Drift, Clay or Frost, or go darker with Truffle or Char if the room takes it.

Feature walls that earn their keep

Because the panels come in 14 colours and two thicknesses, you can mix them. Run two tones in a pattern. Use 24mm for some pieces and 12mm for others so the wall has depth and a shadow line. It reads as a design feature, not as acoustic treatment, and it's doing a job the whole time.