Timber-lined living room with wide windows over the sea

Measured first · Treated second

Acoustic Design for Rooms People Actually Live In

Hard floors, glass, plaster and open plan produce rooms that look calm and sound exhausting: conversation becomes an effort, television needs subtitles, and music turns to noise. We measure what a room is doing — reverberation across the frequency range, background level, isolation from neighbours — then design treatment that fits the interior rather than covering it in studio foam. Most of it ends up looking like curtains, joinery, a rug and a ceiling detail, and the room simply becomes easier to be in.

What We Do Book a Survey

About us

An Acoustician and an Interior Architect

The practice pairs an acoustician who spent fifteen years on concert halls, studios and schools with an interior architect who refuses to let a beautiful room be ruined by grey panels screwed to the wall. Both halves are necessary. Acoustic advice that ignores how a room looks gets ignored by the client; interior work that ignores physics produces rooms that photograph well and are unbearable at a dinner party of eight.

Every project starts with measurement rather than opinion. We record reverberation time in octave bands, background noise levels day and night, isolation between rooms and from neighbouring flats where that is the complaint, and low-frequency behaviour, which is what makes a modern concrete apartment boom and is invisible to the ear until it is pointed out. The report says what the room is doing in numbers and compares it with the range that suits its use.

Treatment is then designed as part of the interior. Absorption goes into the ceiling void, behind slatted timber, inside bookcases, under a bench seat, into heavy interlined curtains and thick rugs with felt underlay; bass control hides in the corners as joinery. Where a client wants visible acoustic panels we design them as objects rather than accessories. The measurements are repeated after installation, and the before-and-after numbers go to the client whether or not they flatter us.

Concert hall foyer with curved timber ceiling forms

Apartment living room with wide windows at dusk

Advantages

What Changes When a Room Is Treated Properly

Six things clients notice within a day of the work being finished.

Measured, Not Guessed

Rooms are surveyed with a calibrated microphone and a measurement system: reverberation time in octave bands from 63 hertz upwards, background noise by day and by night, speech clarity, and airborne and impact isolation where neighbours are the problem. That produces a specific diagnosis — a room may be fine at speech frequencies and disastrous at 100 hertz — instead of a general impression that it sounds echoey. The treatment then addresses the actual fault, which is usually about a third of the material a supplier would sell.

Treatment You Cannot See

Absorption does not have to look like a recording studio. It hides above a slatted or perforated ceiling, behind fabric-faced panels that read as wall finish, inside deep bookcases, under window seats, in heavy interlined curtains that also solve glare, and in wool rugs with felt underlay. Bass absorbers become joinery in the corners of a room. Clients who were braced for an ugly compromise generally find that the room looks better afterwards than before, because the treatment gets designed rather than added.

Low Frequencies Taken Seriously

The complaints people describe as boominess, muddiness or a neighbour's bass are almost always below 150 hertz, where thin foam and curtains do nothing at all. Controlling it needs depth, mass or tuned resonant absorbers, all of which have to be designed into the fabric of the room rather than hung on it. This is the single largest difference between professional acoustic design and a shopping list of panels, and it is why so many self-treated rooms sound dead in the treble and no better in the bass.

Isolation and Absorption Kept Separate

Absorbing sound inside a room does almost nothing to stop it reaching the flat next door, and a great many people spend money on panels hoping to solve a neighbour problem. Isolation is a matter of mass, decoupling and sealing every path — walls, floors, ceilings, sockets, ducts and the gap under the door. We say clearly which of the two problems a client actually has, and we quote them separately so nobody buys the wrong solution by accident.

Priorities Given Honestly

Most homes get eighty per cent of the available improvement from three or four interventions, and the rest costs as much again. Our reports rank the work by effect per euro, so a client can stop at the point where the room is comfortable rather than completing a specification. Several projects end with a rug, curtains and a ceiling change, and we say so rather than proposing a full scheme. Fees are for the design work, not a percentage of the materials, which removes the incentive to over-specify.

Measured Again Afterwards

Every completed project is re-measured with the same equipment in the same positions, and the client receives before-and-after curves with a plain-language explanation. If a target has been missed we say so and adjust at our own cost where the design was at fault. Numbers also settle the question of whether an expensive intervention was worth it, which matters when a client is deciding whether to treat a second room the same way.

Services

How We Work

Surveys, design, isolation projects, listening rooms, new-build advice and installation.

Modern theatre auditorium with tiered seating

Acoustic Survey and Report

A two-hour visit with calibrated measurement equipment covering reverberation, background noise, speech clarity, low-frequency behaviour and, where relevant, isolation to adjoining spaces. The report explains in plain language what the room is doing, what is causing it and what can be changed, with the interventions ranked by effect and cost. Charged as a fixed fee and credited against any design work that follows, and entirely usable by another contractor if the client prefers.

Treatment Design for Living Spaces

Design of absorption, diffusion and bass control integrated with the interior: ceiling systems, slatted and fabric-faced panels, joinery-housed absorbers, curtain and textile specification, floor build-ups and furniture layout. Delivered as drawings and a specification any joiner or decorator can build from, with a materials list and quantities. We can supervise the work or hand it over entirely, and we are happy to work alongside a client's own architect or designer.

Isolation From Neighbours

Diagnosis and design for airborne and impact noise between flats, floors and rooms: independent linings, resilient ceiling systems, floating floors, door and window upgrades, sealing of service penetrations, and treatment of the flanking paths that defeat most attempts. Includes realistic expectations, because a decoupled wall in an apartment with a rigid concrete floor will improve the situation substantially without making it silent, and clients deserve to know that before spending.

Listening Rooms and Home Cinema

Full design for dedicated rooms: geometry and speaker placement, first reflection control, bass management with measured modal analysis, screen and seating positions, isolation from the rest of the house, ventilation that does not carry noise, and integration of the equipment. Measurement and correction are carried out after installation with the client's own system. We do not sell audio equipment, so the advice about it costs nothing to give straight.

New Build and Renovation Advice

Acoustic input at design stage, when it is nearly free: room proportions, wall and floor constructions, glazing specification, door and threshold detailing, service routing, ventilation attenuation and the position of plant. A day of advice before drawings are finalised routinely saves more than a full treatment scheme costs afterwards. We work with architects on private houses, apartment conversions and small hospitality projects.

Supply, Installation and Aftercare

Manufacture and installation of the designed elements by our own joiners and upholsterers, with fabric and timber chosen with the client, or supply-only for those using their own trades. Every completed project is re-measured and documented, and we return within a year at no charge to check that nothing has moved or been covered over. Adjustments to the scheme after the client has lived with it for a season are included in the original fee.

Contacts

Surveys and Enquiries

Describe the problem in your own words — conversation is hard work, the television is unintelligible, the neighbour's bass comes through the floor — and send a photograph and the room dimensions. We will say what is likely to be happening and whether a survey is worth the fee before you book one.

Architects and designers are welcome to contact us at concept stage, which is when acoustic input costs least and achieves most.

Studio10 Rue des Halles, 44000 Nantes, France

Phone+33 2 40 35 71 92

Emailroomtoneacoustics@live.com

Studio HoursMonday–Friday 09:00–18:00; surveys also on Saturdays