An office with exposed brickwork, concrete floors and high ceilings can look incredible. But for Quayside Wealth Management, this industrial office design came with a catch. Their meeting rooms – surrounded by hard, reflective surfaces – amplified conversations, affecting clarity, concentration and the overall meeting experience. Here’s how we delivered an acoustic meeting room strategy to protect their privacy.
The Brief
Based in Gloucester Quays, our client’s workplace followed suit with many of the other offices – a converted warehouse that was characterful, open and visually impressive. With that said, inside, sound bounced off brickwork and glazing, making it acoustically unforgiving. For a finance business that runs frequent collaborative sessions and consultations, this was disruptive. It posed a few challenges for our client, like conversations carrying and echoes that made meetings feel less focused and more fatiguing.
At the same time, the company had recently adopted a refreshed visual identity built around their approachable, fun culture. This introduced a new colour palette that needed to feature predominantly in the design. So, we looked for solutions that were both functional and creative.
The Solution
Effective acoustic design starts with understanding how sound behaves in real workspaces. In our client’s meeting rooms, sound waves were hitting hard surfaces and bouncing straight back into the environment, increasing reverberation time and reducing intelligibility. With a focus on the performance of their meeting rooms, our approach zoned in on targeted acoustic solutions, adding texture, absorption and playful details where it would make the most difference.
Communicating Culture
Collaborating with the team, we selected three signature brand colours – a fresh blue, soft lilac and warm yellow – and matched them with PET felt finishes. Depending on thickness and configuration, PET felt can reach an NRC (Noise Reduction Coefficient) of up to 0.85 (easyfelt.co.uk) – a significant improvement in small, reflective meeting rooms.
Ceiling Baffles
Overhead, we installed a series of suspended PET felt baffles in the selected colour palette. Beyond adding visual energy, these ceiling baffles physically break up sound waves in targeted areas, lowering echo and improving speech clarity. In their meeting rooms, this creates an immediate lift in comfort and usability.
Acoustic Wall Panels
We then addressed the largest reflective surface: the brick walls. Installing PET felt wall panels transformed them from rigid, echo-prone planes into sound-absorbing zones that soften the room. Each panel layout was designed to act as functional art – geometric compositions that expressed the brand personality while delivering measurable acoustic benefit.
Acoustic Meeting Rooms
Each meeting room has a curated mix of wall panels, hanging features and acoustic artwork with a consistent colour story that makes the suite feel cohesive. The result is a set of meeting spaces that perform better, look better and ultimately support the kind of conversations that matter most in a professional services environment.
Stop sound from undermining your business. Get in touch to discuss acoustic office solutions that actually work.
