How to design a building without reverb, Wood panel interior, Good property acoustics advice

How to design a building without Reverb

30 August 2024

As an architect, there are a lot of factors which you have to keep in mind while designing a building. When it comes to designing a new building, you don’t want to give reverb any chance.

That can be a challenge when it comes to a big building (like an office). In this article, we’ll tell you everything about reverb and the way you can avoid it in your designs.

How does reverb happen?

In spacious rooms, sound can travel freely and bounce off the walls. The result of it is a sort of echo, the reverb. Especially when you need to live or work in such a room, it is very unwanted. With acupanels, like the ones from akuwoodpanel.com, you can put an end to the reverb.

Why is reverb unwanted?

Why is reverb unwanted? In short: reverbs are just very annoying. Imagine trying to have a conversation during dinner in a room with a lot of reverb. You can’t even focus on the conversation anymore. Reverb can also cause headaches and decrease productivity in a working environment. Especially when there are a lot of people producing sound in a room with a lot of reverb, it can be very challenging to keep focus. Without realizing, it can be very stressful for someone to live or work the whole day in a spacious room that has a lot of reverb.

Small spaces

When you are designing big buildings like offices, it is almost impossible to have no reverb right after building. You can make sure the reverb gets toned down by making small spaces within the bigger spaces. Half walls here and there to divide a room can be enough to put an end to the reverb. In offices those dividers aren’t even unwanted, because it can be nice to have quiet places when you want to do some work that needs a lot of focus.

The right materials

You can also tone down the reverb in a room by choosing the right materials. Stone walls will always create a bit of reverb, but when you cover them in special acoustic material, like the panels we discussed before, there will be no problem at all.

Such materials are also often used to cover music studio’s in. In such environments reverb is not just unwanted, it can destroy the music that has been recorded.

Comments on this guide to How to design a building without reverb article are welcome.