Acoustic doors give more benefits than you might expect

Noises off

Close any door and it will help reduce sound transmission, but sometimes you need a level of acoustic performance that goes a step further. This is where our expertly designed acoustic doors come in.

Acoustic doors may be required to reduce the transmission of noise out of a room or into a room. An acoustic door to a plant room or a music room, for example will help keep the noise from that room from disturbing people outside the room. An acoustic door to a recording studio or an office will help keep out unwanted external noise.

The Department for Education publishes performance standards for the design of schools, and this includes several pages dedicated to noise and noise management, along with minimum performance levels for doors. In this case specific minimum performance levels are stipulated, but there are numerous benefits to installing acoustic doors, even when a particular performance level is not mandated.

Acoustic doors provide privacy for meeting rooms, consulting rooms and offices. They can prevent unwanted noise from manufacturing filtering into adjoining offices or prevent anxious patients in a dentist’s waiting room from hearing the whine of the drill!

At Performance Doors we can offer a range of acoustic doors that offer sound attenuation from 29dB Rw to 43dB Rw, all tested to the most stringent of standards according to BS EN ISO 140-3 and the results are calculated to BS EN ISO 717-1:1997. But what does a 40dB Rw performance level mean?

The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit used to measure the intensity of sound. An increase of 10dB typically means a doubling of the perceived noise level. Some examples of typical noise levels are shown in the table below. A reduction of 40dB could have the effect of reducing a busy office noise to little more than a murmur.

Rw is the weighted sound reduction index – a measure of noise reduction. It measures the difference between the sound intensity on one side of the door compared with the sound intensity of the noise on the other side – i.e. the noise that has transmitted through the door.

As specialist manufacturers of performance doors, we can not only supply high-performing doors with exceptional acoustic performance, we can combine this acoustic quality with other attributes too. So if you need an acoustic door that is fire-rated to up to 90 minutes, we can help; or if you need acoustic doors that are robust enough to withstand frequent knocks, or acoustic hygiene doors that have an anti-microbial finish, we can help there too.

Call the experienced team at Performance Doors for expert advice. We are fully operational after the pandemic lockdown, and welcome enquiries for fire doors, acoustic doors, hygiene doors, security doors, x-ray doors and more. Visit our website for more detail, or contact us on 01244 551360 or enquiries@performancedoors.co.uk