Acoustic Panels for Offices: Inside a Sunshine Coast Fitout
Lives Lived Well is a not-for-profit health and community services organisation operating across Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. Their Sunshine Coast office had the problem most offices have. Hard surfaces, open working areas, and conversations that carried further than anyone wanted.
We supplied and installed Autex Composition Smooth acoustic fabric in two colourways, Acros and Falling Water, direct fixed to the walls. There is a walkthrough of the finished space below.
This is that project, followed by what we would tell anyone researching acoustic panels for offices: why offices get loud, where treatment needs to go, and how to choose something that does the job rather than decorating the wall.
The project: Lives Lived Well, Sunshine Coast
The brief had two halves that usually pull against each other.
The space needed to sound better. Reverberation was making conversations harder to follow and carrying sound further across the floor than it should have. For an organisation whose work happens in conversation, that is not a cosmetic issue.
It also needed to look considered. A treatment that read as industrial soundproofing would have been the wrong answer even if it performed well, so the acoustic work had to finish like an interior surface rather than equipment bolted to a wall.
| Project detail | Specification |
|---|---|
| Client | Lives Lived Well, Sunshine Coast |
| Product | Autex Composition Smooth acoustic fabric |
| Format | Roll, 1220 mm wide, sold per lineal metre |
| Thickness | 12 mm |
| Absorption | NRC 0.4 |
| Colourways | Acros and Falling Water |
| Application | Walls, direct fix |
| Scope | Supplied and installed by Acoustic Sound Products |
Why fabric rather than mounted panels
Composition Smooth is an acoustic wallcovering, not a panel. It is Vertiface fabric bonded to a dense polyester backing, supplied on a roll 1220 mm wide, and direct fixed flat to the wall so it finishes as a surface.
That is what made it right here. In a hall you want maximum absorption and nobody minds how it reads. In an office the treatment gets looked at every day by the people who work there and the people who visit. A fabric wall holds a clean line, needs no repainting, and reads as a considered finish rather than acoustic hardware.
The trade-off is worth stating plainly. A 12 mm fabric absorbs less than a 50 mm panel, which is the single most important thing to understand before specifying it. More on that below.
Acros and Falling Water
Two colourways, used to give the space definition without turning it into a feature wall exercise.
Colour is where acoustic projects come unstuck, because a small digital swatch tells you almost nothing about how a colour reads across a full wall under office lighting. The photographs below are the actual samples used on this job, shot as material rather than a colour chip.
Sold by the metre, so it fits the wall you actually have
Composition Smooth comes off a roll 1220 mm wide, and you buy the length you need rather than a fixed sheet size. Minimum order is five lineal metres.
That matters more than it sounds. A fixed panel forces the wall to fit the product, which means cutting down, offcut waste, and joins landing wherever the module happens to put them. Buying by the metre means the drops are set out to suit the wall, run floor to ceiling in one continuous piece where the height allows, and stop where the wall stops. The walkthrough shows the finished runs and how the two colourways sit against each other.
Why offices get loud
Offices are built from materials that reflect sound. Plasterboard, glass, hard flooring, desks, screens. Very little of a modern fitout absorbs anything.
When someone speaks, that sound reflects off every hard surface and keeps travelling after they stop. That lingering energy is reverberation. It smears speech, so each syllable overlaps the tail of the one before it, and it raises the background level of the room even when nobody is being loud.
Then the feedback loop starts. People raise their voices to be understood over the accumulated noise, which generates more reflected energy again. The room climbs through the working day, which is why an office can feel fine at nine and exhausting by three without anyone doing anything differently. Absorption is the only thing that breaks that loop.
Where acoustic treatment goes in an office
Placement matters more in an office than in a hall, because offices have identifiable noise sources rather than one large reverberant volume.
Near the sound, not on the far wall. The most common retrofit mistake is running treatment along whichever perimeter wall was free, well away from where the noise is generated. Absorption works hardest closest to the source, so treat the walls around meeting areas, collaboration zones and busy desk clusters first.
On parallel walls. Sound bouncing between two facing hard walls creates flutter, the fast metallic repeat you hear if you clap in a corridor. Treating one of the two surfaces interrupts it.
At speaking height. Treatment does the most work roughly one to two metres off the floor, where voices travel, rather than near the ceiling line where the wall is empty and easy to cover.
In rooms where conversations happen. Meeting and consultation rooms benefit disproportionately, because reverberation in a small hard room degrades speech clarity fast.
How to choose acoustic treatment for an office
Understand the absorption rating before you buy
Noise Reduction Coefficient runs from 0 to 1 and describes how much sound energy a material absorbs rather than reflects.
Autex Composition Smooth is rated NRC 0.4. It is a 12 mm wallcovering, so that number is lower than a thick mounted panel, and it is the correct expectation to have rather than a shortfall.
In practice, Composition Smooth is right when the wall surface needs to do acoustic work while reading as a finish, which describes most office fitouts, meeting rooms and client-facing spaces. If the room is severely reverberant, has a very high ceiling, or is a hall rather than an office, you need more than a wallcovering can deliver. That is a job for a thick mounted panel such as Quietspace Acoustic Panels, rated NRC 0.85 to 1.00.
Specifying a wallcovering for a problem that needs a 50 mm panel is the most expensive mistake in this category. The product performs exactly as rated and the room still sounds wrong.
Check the fire rating
Any product covering a large area of wall becomes part of the building's lining and falls under the National Construction Code's fire hazard requirements. The Autex Composition range achieves Group 1, the highest classification, tested to AS 5637.1 and AS ISO 9705-2003. Confirm the rating on the current data sheet before specifying anything commercially.
Consider what else the wall has to do
In an office the acoustic surface is also a working wall, which is where a fabric finish earns its place beyond absorption.
Composition Smooth has a pinnable surface, so walls that would otherwise need a separate pinboard can carry notices, plans and artwork directly. It is UV stabilised to resist fading, low VOC, made from more than 60% recycled material, and carries a ten year warranty. There are 39 colours, with custom printing and cutting available where a fitout needs to match branding.
What acoustic treatment will not do
Absorption and sound isolation are different jobs, and the distinction matters most in offices.
Absorbent surfaces reduce sound energy inside a room. They shorten reverberation, improve speech clarity and reduce how far a voice carries. They do not stop sound passing through a wall. If the requirement is that a conversation in a closed room cannot be heard from the corridor, that involves wall mass, seals, door specification and ceiling penetrations rather than surface treatment.
If the office is exhausting and hard to concentrate in, absorption is the answer. If you can hear the meeting room from outside it, that is a different scope of work.
Frequently asked questions
How much acoustic wallcovering does an office need?
It depends on the room's volume, its surface materials and where the noise is generated. A carpeted office with soft furniture needs considerably less than the same floor area with hard flooring and glazing. Because Composition Smooth is bought by the lineal metre, the quantity follows the walls you decide to treat rather than a fixed panel count.
Is acoustic treatment worth it in an open-plan office?
Yes, provided it sits near the sources of noise rather than on whichever wall happened to be free. Absorption breaks the cycle of people raising their voices to be heard, which is what makes open-plan offices tiring.
What is the difference between acoustic panels and acoustic fabric?
Panels are thicker, mounted objects that absorb considerably more sound. Fabric wallcovering is thinner, direct fixed flat, and finishes as a wall surface. Panels win on performance, fabric wins on appearance and on covering large continuous areas.
Talk to us about your office
Getting an office right comes down to three decisions in order: enough absorption for the room, positioned where the noise actually is, and a product that meets the fire requirements while still looking like part of the fitout.
Composition Smooth is 1220 mm wide, sold by the lineal metre with a five metre minimum, available across 39 colours. We supply all across Australia and offer installation in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Gold Coast.
View Composition Smooth acoustic fabric, pricing and colours
If your space needs higher absorption than a wallcovering delivers, start with Quietspace Acoustic Panels instead.
