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Learning center / Acoustics by building type / Warehouse and workshop

Acoustic panels for workshops: the complete guide

What makes workshops noisy, which panels fix it, and how to plan treatment from start to finish.

2 minute read · Updated Nov 2026

Less reverberant noise for safer, clearer communication. Acoustic panels do that by absorbing sound energy that would otherwise bounce between hard surfaces. In workshops the main sound sources are machinery, forklifts and tools, and the most common complaints are that machinery noise builds up in the space, alarms and shouts are hard to hear, and that workers need hearing protection.

What is going wrong in the room

Every hard surface reflects sound. When a room has a lot of them, each sound keeps bouncing for a long time and overlaps the next one. That build-up is called reverberation, and it is measured as RT60: the time it takes a sound to fade by 60 decibels. A typical workshop of 100 × 60 ft with a 24 ft ceiling has a volume of about 144,000 ft³. With hard and bare surfaces (tile, concrete, glass and little soft furniture), its echo time is about 7.18 seconds. The target for workshops is 1.50 seconds.

What panels can and cannot do

  • Panels can shorten reverberation, remove flutter echo, make speech clearer and lower the overall noise level that builds up in the room.
  • Panels cannot stop sound passing through walls, floors or doors. That is soundproofing, which needs mass, airtightness and isolation. See soundproofing and STC for workshops.

The recommended starting point

For a workshop like the one above, we suggest about 164 96 × 24 in rectangular baffle, 2 in thicks, which brings the echo time down to about 1.50 s. That is roughly 34% of the wall area if the panels went on the walls. A good split for workshops is about 30% on walls and 70% on the ceiling.

Open the designer with this setup loaded, or browse ready-made models on our warehouse and workshop solutions page.

Plan it in five steps

  1. Measure the room and note what the floor, walls and ceiling are made of.
  2. Work out how many panels you need with the room calculator or the worked example for workshops.
  3. Decide where they go, starting with the placement guide.
  4. Choose thickness, fabric and color to suit the room and its cleaning needs.
  5. Check the fire and code requirements before you order.

Guides for workshops