Summer vacations are well underway, and many of us will be staying in hotels and motels across the country. Hopefully the architect who designed your destination hotel had an acoustical consultant to help control hotel noise and prevent noisy neighbors from waking you up in the night!

Here are just a few things AVANT’s acoustical consultants suggest to help create spaces with better noise isolation between guest rooms:

Metal Stud Construction for Hotel Noise Control

One of the simplest construction methods is to utilize lightweight metal studs instead of wood studs.  Metal studs provide isolation by minimizing the vibration path between the two sides of the wall assembly.

Cavity Absorption for Hotel Noise

Simply filling the cavities in wall assemblies with unfaced fiberglass batt insulation can provide a notable increase in isolation between rooms.  You might be thinking:  “But AVANT ACOUSTICS has always indicated that soft, fuzzy materials provide absorption and mass provides isolation.”

You’re right, and bonus points to you for remembering that!  However, absorption can help the overall isolation of a wall by attenuating some sounds that get into the wall cavity through construction imperfections and penetrations.

Add Mass for Hotel Noise Isolation

The more mass that is between adjacent rooms, the better the isolation, generally speaking.  Some ways to add mass are: additional layers of gypsum wall board, additional layers of acoustical gypsum board, or installing acoustical vinyl sheets.  Combining different types of materials is typically most effective.

So, are you going to call your preferred hotel chain and ask them about the construction of your summer destination hotel?  Probably not.  But at least now you have a few of the tips and tricks of the trade to ensure the guest rooms you design perform better.

Contact us for full consulting assistance on your next hotel design project.  The hotel guests will be thankful you did!