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Learning center / Acoustics by building type / House of worship

Acoustic panels for sanctuaries: the complete guide

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

2 minute read · Updated Nov 2026

Speech that is clear and music that still sounds full. Acoustic panels do that by absorbing sound energy that would otherwise bounce between hard surfaces. In sanctuaries the main sound sources are speech, choir, organ or band, and the sound system, and the most common complaints are that the sermon is hard to follow at the back, the rear wall echoes, and that the band sounds muddy.

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 sanctuary of 80 × 50 ft with a 24 ft ceiling has a volume of about 96,000 ft³. With typical surfaces (drywall, a rug and some furniture), its echo time is about 3.31 seconds. The target for sanctuaries is 1.40 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 sanctuaries.

The recommended starting point

For a sanctuary like the one above, we suggest about 68 48 × 96 in rectangular panel, 2 in thicks, which brings the echo time down to about 1.39 s. That is roughly 35% of the wall area if the panels went on the walls. A good split for sanctuaries is about 80% on walls and 20% on the ceiling.

Open the designer with this setup loaded, or browse ready-made models on our house of worship 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 sanctuaries.
  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 sanctuaries