How Effective is Hidden Acoustic Treatment?

Many spaces are designed without acoustics in mind. This can end up causing issues once the space is occupied. For example, some restaurants and office spaces want to go for the industrial look which typically involves exposed metal ceilings, brick walls and polished concrete floors. This results in an extremely reflective and reverberant space in dire need of sound absorbing panels. However, a lot of these restaurant owners are so set on keeping aesthetics, they would rather keep any acoustic treatment hidden under tables or chairs. There’s always the question of whether or not the panels would be effective at all when placed under furniture, and the answer is no not really. You may be wondering why this is case and we’re gonna tell you.

Is Sound Absorption Under Tables and Chairs Effective?

Acoustic panels need to be exposed to any sound waves in order to absorb them before they get the chance to bounce off the walls multiple times. If they’re hidden under tables and chairs, how do you expect the sound waves to reach them? The only time we would recommend “hiding” panels is if the ceiling above has a resting place (joists or beams) that will still allow most of the panel to remain exposed. Otherwise, panels should be wall mounted or ceiling mounted to work to the best of their ability.

If you’d like a more detailed approach on strategically hanging panels check out Where to Place Acoustic Panels. Essentially, it doesn’t really matter where sound absorbing panels are placed, but you do need be sure they’re spread out evenly throughout a space. If you bunch them all together in one corner, or keep them just on one wall, the sound will still reverberate off of the untreated walls.

Functional and Decorative Acoustic Treatment

So how can you “hide” acoustic panels without impairing their noise reduction qualities? You can’t necessarily hide them but you can camouflage them with the decor of the space they’ll be installed in. There’s a few options you have to make sure they blend in with the space.

1. Color match to walls – this makes the acoustic wall panels difficult to see
2. Color match to ceiling – similarly acoustical ceiling clouds may blend in with the ceiling above
3. Art wrapped acoustic panels – “hide the panels in plain sight” by using artwork as a camouflage for them

How to Hide Fabric Wrapped Acoustic Panels

One popular method is picking a fabric color to wrap the panels in that matches the color of the walls or ceilings. While yes, you can still tell there’s something there, it wouldn’t stand out as much as a yellow fiberglass panel on a white wall.

The easiest colors to match are black or white, but there are a lot of acoustically transparent fabric colors to choose from so you can match your walls. If you’re still not ok with having panels stick out on your walls, you can choose ceiling mounted acoustic panels, or ceiling clouds.

Ceiling clouds and panels both mount to the ceiling, but clouds have an air gap behind them which actually helps improve the noise reduction coefficient, or NRC. They are much less noticeable on the ceiling, but it will take a bit longer for the sound waves to reach them, so the sound may still reverberate from the walls before it reached the ceiling mounted panels.

Art Wrapped Acoustic Panels

If you’re still not happy with either of those methods and want your panels to be even more inconspicuous, try art wrapped acoustics panels. This way, no one will be able to tell that you have acoustic material on your walls, they’ll just think you got some new art.

Using a process called dye-sublimation, pictures can be printed on a piece of acoustically transparent fabric and come out looking like a photo on paper. Art wrapped panels are popular in schools or other educational settings. For example, our parent company Commercial Acoustics recently installed educational art panels at Zoo Tampa.

How Effective is Hidden Acoustic Treatment?

So, depending on how you decide to keep acoustic panels hidden, they may or may not be effective. Hiding them by placing them under tables and chairs will have a large negative affect on the sound absorption qualities. If you feel you need the panels to blend into the space, just consider color matching them to the walls or ceilings, or going with art wrapped acoustic panels.

Rather than hiding acoustical treatments, consider also supplementing that approach with cost-effective acoustic wall panels and ceiling clouds to best improve the acoustical performance in your space.

If you have any questions about acoustics or about our products, feel free to reach out, we’d love to help!