Café’s can be a hotspot for activity and noise. The fast-paced hustle and bustle of staff taking orders, baristas making coffees, kitchenhands prepping food, and the chatter amongst patrons can contribute to high levels of background noise.
Paired with the hard surfaces of concrete walls, marble coffee counters, and wooden tables, sound is forced to linger and echo within the interior.
So, what’s the result? Unwanted levels of noise can turn a coffee run into an excruciating cognitive overload. As people instinctively move away from unpleasant sounds, patrons may choose to leave a noisy café for a quieter space to enjoy.
Treating a noisy café isn’t about creating a silent space. Some background noise can contribute to an attractive, vibrant atmosphere, but it needs to be managed accordingly. This can be achieved by selecting and installing the right acoustic products, depending on the unique aesthetic and acoustic needs of the space. As carpet is often not appropriate in hospitality settings for the risk of spilling food and drink, wall and ceilings still provide a breadth of opportunity.
Designers can also opt for acoustic products that look like ‘trendy’ hard surfaces like printed wood panelling, concrete, or wallpaper style graphics for a feature wall effect. Designers can also use strategically placed products to target especially loud sources of noise, like coffee machines and groups of tables.
Acoufelt’s interior soundscaping products are designed to absorb sound, reduce reverberation and limit sound transmission in café environments. Not only do Acoufelt offer a full suite of floor, wall and ceiling products appropriate for cafes, but we can also assist with acoustic consultations, delivery, installation, furniture removal, as well as a number of other services. We also offer custom designs across each of our collections.
Walls offer a variety of opportunities for acoustic treatment with Acoufelt’s wide collection of products, available in a broad range of sizes, colors, prints, cuts, and designs. Depending on your acoustic and aesthetic needs, select from our regular panels, printed panels, wall shapes and wall tiles. Full panels are effective for mid-frequency sound generated by voice, and should be installed to sit at or above head height.
Designers may also opt for panels from our printed collection to work within a particular theme, and can select from our range of prints, or submit their own custom images for reproduction. For the best acoustic results, install panels on adjacent walls. Multi-colored acoustic shapes and bevelled-cut Fracture tiles can also be installed in tessellating patterns to create a spectacular mosaic finish.
Depending on the ceiling system available to you, Acoufelt offers a mix of practical, easy-install acoustic ceiling products.
For rooms with a ceiling grid system, drop-in ceiling tiles are a simple but effective solution; available in both regular and printed options. For areas requiring a targeted approach – such as a loud coffee machine or seating area – ceiling clouds or baffles can be hung above, offering a large surface area for acoustic absorption.
High performing acoustic ceiling panels can also be stuck directly to the ceiling, offering an excellent NRC value of up to 0.85.
Little Mission Cafe opted to hang Acoufelt’s black ceiling clouds to complement the high exposed ceilings of what was the former Adelaide City Mission Hall, acting to absorb the sound reverberation from the concrete floor and adjacent glass windows.
For Voila Café in Victoria, the client submitted their own photographs of the nearby Colac Rainforest for reproduction on Acoufelt acoustic panels. The high-resolution printed panels achieve an NRC of 0.45, and were installed near coffee tables to absorb the excess sound from patron conversations.
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