Softer echo for conversation, TV and music, without looking like a studio. Acoustic panels do that by absorbing sound energy that would otherwise bounce between hard surfaces. In living rooms the main sound sources are voices, the TV and music, and the most common complaints are that conversation gets loud when friends are over, TV dialogue is hard to follow, and that hard floors and big windows make the room ring.
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 living room of 18 × 14 ft with a 9 ft ceiling has a volume of about 2,268 ft³. With typical surfaces (drywall, a rug and some furniture), its echo time is about 1.03 seconds. The target for living rooms is 0.50 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 living rooms.
The recommended starting point
For a living room like the one above, we suggest about 17 24 × 48 in arch panel, 2 in thicks, which brings the echo time down to about 0.50 s. That is roughly 22% of the wall area if the panels went on the walls. A good split for living rooms is about 90% on walls and 10% on the ceiling.
Open the designer with this setup loaded, or browse ready-made models on our living room solutions page.
Plan it in five steps
- Measure the room and note what the floor, walls and ceiling are made of.
- Work out how many panels you need with the room calculator or the worked example for living rooms.
- Decide where they go, starting with the placement guide.
- Choose thickness, fabric and color to suit the room and its cleaning needs.
- Check the fire and code requirements before you order.
Guides for living rooms
- How many acoustic panels does a living rooms need?
- Where to put acoustic panels in a living rooms
- Wall acoustics for living rooms
- Ceiling acoustics for living rooms
- Choosing panel thickness for a living rooms
- What acoustic treatment costs for a living rooms
- Installing acoustic panels in a living rooms
- Common acoustic mistakes in living rooms