# Print Covered Acoustical Panels



## Guest (Mar 18, 2007)

Hi,

I have a home with an open floor plan and a large family room with 2 story ceilings. I'm in desperate need of sound absorption, so I purchased 30 24"x24" acoustical panels to try and help. 

Of course my wife took one look at them and said "no way those are going on the wall". The colors are pretty bland and she thought they would be more attractive. I was looking at www.Whisperwalls.com and saw that they have a number of art covered panels available in their whisper art and whisper mural categories.

This would be the ideal solution for me since I'm also into photography and art. The Whisperwall solution is WAY out of my price tag so I'm wondering what type of material they print on?

I've already made a substantial investment in the wall panelsand I'm willing to invest the time to re-wrap them if I can take some photo's and have them printed on fabric as Whisperwall has.

I can get printing done on canvas relatively cheap as I travel to Asia a couple times a year for work but I don't think painters canvas will let much sound through.

Does anyone have an idea what type of fabric is used for this purpose?

Thanks in advance!!!


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## alan monro (May 9, 2006)

Tonecold,Be a man and inform your wife those panels are going to stay without modifications and that is it! Wifes take second place after Home Theatre


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## Otto (May 18, 2006)

Yeah, you tell her!!!!

That's the way it works around here!!! :bigsmile: :bigsmile: :bigsmile:


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## Guest (Mar 20, 2007)

Truth be told, I don't like the way they look myself.:no: 

She knows if I want her opinion, I'll give it to her :bigsmile: but my ceilings are 19 feet high in this room and with that many panels hanging on the wall, they would look pretty bad. The room is actually 20x20 w/19 ft ceilings. I'm really surprised that there isn't an attractive residential option for this problem with all of the open floor plans out there today. I've searched high and low but cant find anything other than the art solution mentioned above.

The prices are way out of my range for those guys however and I'm trying to come up with a reasonably priced solution.


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## Otto (May 18, 2006)

tonecold said:


> Truth be told, I don't like the way they look myself.:no:


Yeah, I know how you feel about the look of them. 

I'm in the middle of a number of projects right now, but somewhere in the back of my head I'm thinking of making some DIY panels. I've already talked with the wife about putting them up, and I think she's OK with it. But they have to look at least somewhat cool. I probably won't go all the way looking for a print of a picture like you are considering, but I will probably wrap them with something more appealing than the standard beige or black. 

I think I read somewhere that there are many materials out there that are decent for wrapping something like that. I might not want to use those materials as grille cloth, but they will most likely work fine for acoustic panels -- as long as you can put them over your speakers and they don't really muffle the sound, they should allow most of that sound to travel through to the panel. So you might be able to find a pre-made print at your local fabric store that could work for you...

I could be wrong, though, and I know that Ethan Winer or bpape could be able to comment on that more definitively.


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

There are options - just not inexpensive ones. You are correct in that a cloth does not need to be as transparent for treatment covering as it does for in front of a speaker. You'll still want to be able to blow through it but the HF absorbtion is a non-issue since that's what you're trying to accomplish here - as opposed to it killing frequency response of a tweeter.

One thing that can be done is to be creative with the shape and mounting. For instance:

Build a false soffit around the upper perimeter of the room and cover with a nice color coordinated cloth to the curtains or carpet. Great bass control potential.

Build some smaller panels, like 18"x18" and hang them at 45 degrees like a diamond. Mount 4 in a diamond pattern and hang a picture covered one in the center.

Build false arches extending from the walls a few inches (no it's not that hard) and fill the centers of the arch with material and cover with a mural type cloth pattern.

Build some odd shapes - trapezoids, triangles, circles, etc. Get crafty and mount something SMALL in the center of a panel so the panel looks more like a matting for the small item rather than just drawing attention to itself.

Build sealed wooden membrane type absorbers around the bottom 3' of the room to look like a Wainscoat and put a small shelf on top of it for nick-nacks - see above for what to do above that.

Just some ideas.

Bryan


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## JimP (May 18, 2006)

Here's a partial solution that you might want to consider.

Hang your panels on the wall and over them with your own photography. 

http://shopping.discovery.com/product-63552.html

Another option would be to buy some nice tapestries to cover the panels. You wouldn't want to do the entire wall, but it might be a good compromise.


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## muse77 (Dec 14, 2006)

tonecold said:


> Hi,
> 
> This would be the ideal solution for me since I'm also into photography and art.
> 
> I've already made a substantial investment in the wall panelsand I'm willing to invest the time to re-wrap them if I can take some photo's and have them printed on fabric as Whisperwall has.


You mention that you are into art. Do you know how to use an air brush? I want to build my own panels too. I think it would be cool to airbrush art on the panels using dye for t-shirts. I also have thought about iron on art like they use for t-shirts also. I would think that dye would not interfere with the sound absorbing.:scratchhead: 

Let us know how it goes. I have 12ft ceilings and I am thinking about making 4' by 6' foot panels or 4' by 4' panels.


Bryan


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## bpape (Sep 14, 2006)

If it's really a dye, then there should be little to no impact on the sonic qualities of the cloth. 

Bryan


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