Home Acoustics
Reduce echo in open-plan homes
Acoustic panels that control reflections from hard walls, floors and glazing, creating a more comfortable environment for conversation, dining and everyday living.
Open-plan Kitchens | Dining Rooms | Double-height Spaces | Home Cinemas
What Songbird acoustic panels do in a home
Home acoustic panels are sound-absorbing wall and ceiling panels that reduce echo and harshness inside a room. They do not stop noise coming from next door, upstairs or outside, which is what most people are looking for when they start searching. What they do fix is the modern hard-surfaced interior: an open-plan kitchen-diner with bifold doors, hard flooring and no soft furnishing will ring in a way a carpeted, curtained room never did. Songbird is NOVA Acoustics’ range of Class A acoustic panels, specified by acoustic consultants who will tell you when panels are not the answer.
What better acoustics can achieve in homes
Reduced Reverberant Build-up
Panels absorb reflections from hard floors, glazing and open-plan surfaces, creating a more controlled and comfortable sound environment.
Clearer Home Working and Calls
Reducing room reflections can improve speech clarity and make video calls sound less echoey. Panels do not prevent conversations being heard in adjoining rooms.
Enhanced Home Theatre Experience
In entertainment areas, acoustic panels optimise sound quality by reducing echoes and improving clarity, delivering a cinema-like experience.
Comfortable Work and Study Spaces
Reducing harsh reflections helps make home working, reading and study more comfortable.
Calmer Living Spaces
Panels reduce echo within the room. Noise from neighbours, traffic or other rooms requires a separate sound insulation assessment.
Design That Suits Your Home
Panel colours, sizes and positions can be coordinated with your interior, furniture and lighting.
Take a look at our projects
Education
Acoustic Treatment for a School in London to BB93
Improving speech clarity and reducing reverberation across a busy London school—without compromising the appearance of its classrooms or disrupting teaching.
Office
What our clients say about us
Design, supply and install of acoustic panels for a mixed-use community hall.
“I just wanted to say thank you for everything you have done in terms of the acoustics at Kirkgate Community Centre, also Andy and his team were amazing. The place looks amazing.”
Nicole Williams – Kirkgate Community Centre
Supply and install acoustic panels for 5 Sports Halls.
“Thank you for the works provided over the summer period. It has been a seamless project and the new panels look great. “
Lauren Cassidy – Galliford Try
Design, supply and install acoustic panels for a multi-use school hall.
“We are very happy with the work and the difference is very noticeable.“
Anna Ellison – Weetwood School
Our Service from Start to Finish
Tell us about your space
Send us your floor plan or dimensions, photographs and a short video, and explain the acoustic problem.
Acoustic consultant review
Our acoustic consultants assess the layout, finishes and use of the space to determine what treatment is needed.
Treatment design & quotation
We recommend the right panels, quantities and locations, with a clear layout and quotation.
Supply and installation
Choose supply-only or nationwide installation, scheduled around your working hours where required.
Why choose Songbird for homes?
Consultant-led, not guesswork
We calculate the appropriate panel type, quantity and layout for your space.
Designed around your interior
Panels, rafts and baffles coordinated with your lighting, furniture and branding.
Supply-only or nationwide installation
Choose the service you need, with installation planned around working hours.
Clear, honest advice
We explain what acoustic panels will solve—and when source control, layout changes or sound insulation are also needed.
Ready for a better-sounding space?
Send us your room details and an acoustic consultant will recommend the appropriate panels, quantity and layout—with no obligation. Prefer to talk? Call 0113 322 7977 for expert advice.
Will acoustic panels stop noise from my neighbours?
No. Acoustic panels absorb sound inside a room. They do nothing about sound arriving through a party wall, a floor, a window or a door. If you can hear the neighbours’ television, footsteps upstairs or traffic through the glazing, panels will not change it, and no quantity of them will.
That distinction is worth getting right before spending anything, because the two problems have completely different remedies.
| What you are hearing | What it actually is | Will panels help? |
|---|---|---|
| The room rings, voices sound harsh, the TV is hard to follow | Reverberation inside the room | Yes, this is exactly what panels do |
| Your own footsteps and voices echo in an open-plan space | Reverberation inside the room | Yes |
| Video calls sound echoey to the person at the other end | Reverberation inside the room | Yes |
| Music or dialogue sounds boomy and imprecise | Reverberation and room modes | Partly, and depth matters more than area |
| Neighbours’ TV or conversation through a wall | Airborne sound insulation | No |
| Footsteps or furniture from the flat above | Impact sound insulation | No |
| Traffic or aircraft through the windows | Facade sound insulation | No |
| Plumbing, boiler or extractor noise | Services noise, structure-borne | No |
Everything in the bottom half of that table is a construction problem. The remedies are mass, decoupling and sealing, and they involve building work rather than fixing something to a wall. NOVA Acoustics carries out UKAS-accredited sound insulation testing, so the first step where a neighbour is involved is measuring what is actually happening rather than guessing.
Why modern homes ring when older ones did not. The rooms have not changed size. The finishes have. A contemporary extension or refurbishment typically has hard flooring instead of fitted carpet, plain plaster instead of textiles, large areas of glazing instead of small windows with heavy curtains, an open plan instead of separate rooms, and a higher ceiling. Every one of those is a design decision made for good reasons, and every one removes absorption. The kitchen-diner extension is the single most common domestic acoustic complaint in the UK, and it is entirely a consequence of how they are built.
Rough quantities.
| Room | Typical size | Untreated RT60 | Target | Class A absorption | Panels at 1200 × 1000 mm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home office | 3 × 3 × 2.4 m | ~0.7 s | 0.4 s | ~5 m² | 4 |
| Living room, hard-finished | 5 × 4 × 2.4 m | ~0.9 s | 0.5 s | ~9 m² | 8 |
| Garden room or studio | 5 × 3.5 × 2.4 m | ~0.9 s | 0.4 s | ~12 m² | 10 |
| Home cinema | 6 × 4 × 2.4 m | ~1.0 s | 0.35 s | ~21 m² | 18 |
| Open-plan kitchen-diner | 8 × 5 × 2.6 m | ~1.1 s | 0.5 s | ~23 m² | 19 |
These are indicative examples not specifications. Figures assume hard flooring, plain plastered walls and minimal soft furnishing, with the room unoccupied. Panels are Class A to BS EN ISO 11654 (αw ≥ 0.90), using the Sabine method. A room that already has fitted carpet, heavy curtains and upholstered furniture needs considerably less, and in many cases needs nothing.
The cheapest fix is often not panels. A large rug on a hard floor, lined curtains at a glazed wall, and upholstered rather than hard furniture will together do a surprising amount, and they cost less than a treatment scheme. Panels earn their place where those options are not available or not wanted: a home office that has to sound clean on calls, a cinema room, a garden studio, or an open-plan space where the design intent rules out soft furnishing. Saying so is not a reason to skip the enquiry. It is the reason to trust the answer when it does come.
Four things to consider for homes
Identify the noise path
Room echo and noise through walls or floors are different problems.
Consider soft furnishings
Rugs, lined curtains and upholstered furniture may already provide useful absorption.
Focus on the listening area
Home offices, cinemas and open-plan living spaces each need a different layout.
Keep the interior in mind
Coordinate panel size, finish and position with glazing, furniture and lighting.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Panels absorb sound inside a room and do nothing about sound arriving through a party wall, a floor, a window or a door. Noise from neighbours is a sound insulation problem, and the remedies are mass, decoupling and sealing as part of the construction. NOVA Acoustics carries out UKAS-accredited sound insulation testing to establish what is actually happening first.
Only if the problem is inside the room, which it usually is not. Panels will not reduce traffic through the window, a neighbour’s television or footsteps from above, which are the common causes of disturbed sleep. Where a bedroom simply sounds harsh and echoey, panels will soften it, but they should not be bought as a sleep intervention.
Because of the finishes rather than the size. Hard flooring, plain plaster, large glazed doors and an absence of soft furnishing remove almost all the absorption a traditional room had from carpet, curtains and upholstery. A higher ceiling adds volume on top of that. It is the most common domestic acoustic complaint in the UK and a direct consequence of how extensions are built.
An open-plan kitchen-diner of around 8 by 5 metres typically needs about 23 m² of Class A absorption, or roughly 19 standard panels, to bring it from about 1.1 seconds down to 0.5. A home office of 3 by 3 metres needs around 5 m². Rooms with carpet, curtains and upholstered furniture need considerably less, and sometimes need nothing at all.
Often, yes. A large rug on a hard floor, lined curtains across glazing and upholstered rather than hard furniture will do a surprising amount between them, at lower cost. Panels earn their place where those are not wanted or not enough: a home office that has to sound clean on calls, a cinema room, a garden studio, or an open-plan space where soft furnishing would spoil the design.
Yes, and this is one of the clearest domestic uses. A microphone picks up reflected sound alongside your voice, which is why a hard-surfaced room sounds hollow to everyone else on the call even though it sounds fine to you. A small amount of absorption on the wall behind and beside the camera position makes a noticeable difference.
Substantially. Dialogue clarity and stereo imaging both depend on controlling early reflections from the side walls and ceiling, and a hard-finished room smears both. Home cinemas need more absorption than a normal living room, around 0.35 seconds, and the low end depends on room dimensions and speaker placement more than on panel quantity.
No. Sound reaching another room travels through the wall, floor or door, which is insulation rather than absorption. Panels will make the room you are in sound better without changing what the rest of the house hears. Where that matters, the remedy is the door, the partition or the floor construction.
Panels are made to order in a wide range of fabric colours and custom sizes, and can be printed, so they can be specified to match a scheme or treated as artwork. In domestic settings ceiling rafts and slim panels behind furniture are both common where wall space is already committed.
Often, yes. Songbird Swift is self-adhesive and designed for straightforward installation, which suits a single room done at a weekend. Larger schemes, ceiling work and anything at height are better installed professionally. NOVA supplies for self-installation as well as installing, so a domestic project can be split whichever way suits.
Shop the Songbird Acoustic Panel Range
Already know what you need? Explore our high-performance panels for direct UK delivery. If not, our acoustic consultants can recommend the right product, quantity and layout.
Sustainable, high performance acoustic treatment
Sustainable 40mm Polyester Fibre Acoustic Panel with Class A Sound Absorption made with >60% Recycled Material. Suitable for walls, ceilings, rafts or baffles.
Premium finishes and design-led interiors.
Simple, cost-effective self-installation.
40mm Fabric Wrapped Acoustic Panel with Class A Sound Absorption. Self-adhesive for easy DIY Installation. Suitable for surface mounting to walls or ceilings.
Durable protection for high-impact areas.
