Improving Acoustics in Commercial and Residential Settings with Wallpaper
Atmosphere is the first thing a room says and the last thing it is designed for. A restaurant at full tilt, a dinner party hitting its stride, a call that has to land — each one lives or dies on how the space handles sound. Most acoustic fixes ask you to hang something engineered and grey on the wall. This one begins as a wallpaper.
“Soundproof has a high absorbency of the wall layer (30–60% of the medium frequencies between 250 and 2000 Hz).”
When faced with large interior spaces, long hallways with hard or polished surfaces, tall ceilings and rooms that carry and amplify sound, there are seldom solutions that meet design guidelines and functionality. It has been well explored that sound reverberations can mean the difference between enhanced experience and quality, and disquiet and unease. SOUNDPROOF is purpose-built for designers, interior designers and architects for projects that demand higher quality finishes and better environmental suitability.
Where projects are constructed around the human form, the user and the customer, these types of nuances are what separate dinner-table conversations ruined by loud, echoing noise in a restaurant from warm and intimate spaces that are not voluminous and exposing. SOUNDPROOF has been used in places it matters, including restaurants, apartments, long hallways and staircases, offices and conference rooms, meeting spaces, libraries, home cinemas, bedrooms, retail spaces, waiting rooms, galleries and exhibition spaces, swimming pools and sound-based environments including hi-fi sound rooms, and clubs.
Rarely does a product deliver such choice, sophisticated design and an elegant solution with proven and noticeable results.
“It absorbs the unpleasant effects of high frequencies and increases the purity of audible frequencies, improving their perception.”
Echo and transmission are not the same thing
Sound does two different things in a room, and it pays to keep them apart. The first is echo — the liveliness you hear when a hard, empty room throws your own voice back at you. The second is transmission — sound travelling through the wall from the flat, office or street on the other side.
SOUNDPROOF is measured for the first. Its tested absorption coefficient — αw 0.40, Londonart’s own figure — means the surface soaks up part of the sound energy that reaches it inside the room, softening the echo and shortening the reverberation. On the European scale used to grade sound absorbers that places it in Class D: a real, useful effect on how a lively room feels.
A dense, quiet layer — made to measure in Italy
Underneath the print, SOUNDPROOF is a closed-cell PVC foam layer on a cotton support — the heaviest of Londonart’s five substrates, which is what lets it soak up sound where ordinary paper only reflects it, so the wall works acoustically without ever looking like acoustic kit. It is printed to order, cut to the exact height of your wall, and thick enough to sit forgivingly over small imperfections in the surface beneath.
Quiet, here, is a property of the material — never of the design. The same acoustic support carries 673 designs, from near-plains to full scenic murals. Quiet does not mean beige.
Where water is in play — a shower, a splashback, a poolside wall — that is a different material entirely; our guide to waterproof wallpaper for wet areas and outdoor walls covers it.
- Absorption
- αw 0.40 (a Class D absorber)αw 0.40 is Londonart’s own tested value; under EN ISO 11654 that places it in absorption Class D. An in-room echo measure — not a between-rooms rating.
- Absorbency band
- 30–60% of mid frequencies, 250–2000 HzThe share of sound energy the wall layer soaks up across the speech range.
- Composition
- 92% PVC & plasticisers, 8% cottonA closed-cell PVC foam layer on a cotton support.
- Weight
- 700 g/m² (±10%)The densest of the five Londonart supports.
- Format
- 65 cm rolls, cut to your wall height
- Thickness
- Enough to forgive a wall’s minor flawsLondonart publishes no millimetre figure; the sheet notes only that its thickness hides small irregularities.
- Made in
- Italy
- Reaction to fire
- Euroclass B-s2-d0 (EN 13501-1)Tested to EN 15102, the wallcoverings product standard; ASTM E 84 Class A.
- Care
- Washable; VOC-free once installedAntibacterial and rot-proof (EN 259 / EN 233).
- Not suitable
- Wet areas — route those to GLASS
Figures are Londonart’s published specification for SOUNDPROOF-S670. The absorption coefficient is the manufacturer’s own tested value.
The rooms an absorbent wall was made for
These are design scenarios, not case studies — a way of showing where an absorbent wall helps most. The murals are from the range; the rooms are illustrative.
Where open plan turns into open season
An open-plan floor trades walls for hard, sound-reflecting surfaces, which is why every call and keyboard carries across it. A feature wall on the acoustic support gives some of that energy somewhere to go, so meetings stop competing and video calls read cleanly at the far end. It is the kind of acoustic enhancement architects and interior designers can specify without surrendering the room to grey foam — the treatment is the design.
The din of glasses, minus the din
A dining room fills with the clink of glasses and a dozen overlapping conversations, and hard surfaces let all of it pile up until nobody can hear their own table. A dining-room feature wall in the absorbent finish takes the sharpest edge off that build-up, so the room stays lively without turning punishing — and it does the acoustic work while carrying the mural, not a panel bolted over it.
Where the first reflection matters most
In a screening room or around a good hi-fi, the sound that reaches you a fraction after the direct sound — the reflection off a nearby side wall — is what smears detail before you consciously hear it. An absorbent wall in the right place reduces early reflections of sound, improving audible frequencies and driving enhanced sound quality in a space. These are precisely the rooms the technical sheet points the material at: cinemas and audition halls, and homes with a hi-fi.
Living rooms, made easier to be in
SOUNDPROOF is perfect for open-plan living rooms and spaces where softening the liveliness of your own room makes it easier to be in. SOUNDPROOF calms the room you are in — making time spent watching your favourite shows, listening to your favourite music and hosting your favourite people more pleasurable for all occupants. Its application can also include dining rooms and long extended hallways.
Where an absorbent wall belongs
The acoustic support is specified wherever a hard room needs softening and a bolted-on acoustic panel would intrude on the design — from the rooms Londonart names on its technical sheet to the many that share the same acoustics.
- Executive and operative offices
- Open-plan offices
- Meeting rooms
- Restaurants
- Gyms
- Swimming pools
- Private homes
- Cinemas and audition halls
- Conference halls
- Theatres
- Clubs
- Domestic environments with hi-fi systems
The environments named on Londonart’s SOUNDPROOF technical data sheet. Reported as the manufacturer’s specification, not a Wall in Love performance promise. Where water actually lands — a pool’s wet walls, a shower — the waterproof GLASS substrates take over.
- Hotel lobbies and reception areas
- Boardrooms
- Home theatres and listening rooms
- Libraries and studies
- Open-plan living and dining rooms
- Waiting rooms
- Consulting rooms
- Stairwells and circulation spaces
- Retail fit-outs
- Galleries and exhibition spaces
Our own scenarios — rooms whose hard surfaces behave the same acoustic way. We do not attribute these to Londonart.
Made to your wall, then hung strip by strip
We supply the made-to-measure wallcovering; the install itself is carried out by your own decorator. What follows is how the material behaves on the wall, so you and your installer know what to expect.
- 01It arrives numbered
SOUNDPROOF is printed to order and delivered as 65 cm strips, cut to your wall’s height and numbered in sequence. The strips are hung edge to edge — aligned, never overlapped — so the pattern runs unbroken across the wall.
- 02The wall is prepared
The surface beneath has to be sound, absorbent and free of oil, water and dust, then skimmed smooth and painted white. Ceramic tiles are levelled with a smoothing primer and their joints filled first, so nothing telegraphs through.
- 03A single adhesive, rolled on the wall
One ready-to-use adhesive is applied straight to the wall with a short-wool roller — roughly 150 to 250 grams per square metre — a section of ten to fifteen square metres at a time, rather than the whole wall at once.
- 04It is given time to set
The material is happiest at about 20°C, allows roughly fifteen to twenty minutes of open time to position each strip, and sets over forty-eight hours. It is washable once up, and free of volatile emissions once installed.
Every panel is made to order in Italy, so production begins once your order is confirmed. Lead times for manufacture and delivery are estimates only, subject to manufacturer availability and shipping conditions — we will give you a realistic timeframe with your proposal.
Bring the volume down, not the design
The room still looks like yours; it simply stops shouting back. Handle the material, try a design on your own wall, or browse the full acoustic range — every one printed on the support tested to an absorption of αw 0.40.
Physical samples are available on request. SOUNDPROOF is one of eight Wall in Love substrates — see the substrate detail for the full specification.
