Wood Acoustic & Soundproof Doors

Tested wood assemblies commonly reach the low-to-mid 40s STC, and specialist constructions go into the high 40s and low 50s. That covers essentially every requirement in finished space: normal speech is inaudible through STC 45 to 50, which is what a board room, a consultation room or a hotel suite needs. Beyond that, the practical answer is steel, or two doors with an air gap.

A dense, layered core rather than the particleboard of a standard commercial leaf — often with damping layers — faced in veneer or laminate and edged in hardwood or a rated composite. It is noticeably heavier than a normal door, which is the point: mass is what stops sound. The weight is also why the hinges, closer and frame are specified with it.

Yes — that is the reason to choose wood. The face is specified the same way as any commercial wood door: species, cut and match, or a plastic laminate to a colour. An acoustic door in a run of ordinary doors should be indistinguishable from the corridor, and where a run is being replaced piecemeal we match as closely as the original allows and say so where an exact match is not achievable.

Yes, and in hotels, hospitals and offices it usually must be. Mineral-core constructions carry both a fire label and an STC rating when they are listed that way from the start. What is not permitted is fitting an acoustic seal set or a drop seal to an existing labelled fire door — the listing does not survive it, and it becomes a deficiency at the next inspection.

Look at the gaps and the walls before the door. The three usual causes are a missing drop seal, a threshold left off during finishing, and a frame that was never part of the acoustic assembly. After that come flanking paths: a partition that stops at the ceiling grid rather than the deck, a shared air return, or a glazed screen beside the door with no acoustic glazing in it.

Frequently, yes. If the leaf is solid-core and reasonably heavy, fitting proper perimeter gasketing, an automatic drop seal and a sealed threshold gains several STC points and costs far less than replacement — and it addresses the leak path most rooms actually have. Hollow-core or light leaves have a low ceiling on what retrofitting achieves, and there the assembly has to be replaced.

It matters as much as the door. A meeting room with an STC 45 door and a single-glazed sidelight performs at the sidelight, not the door. Acoustic glazing — laminated glass, or double glazing with an air gap — is specified for the screen at the same time, and so is the seal at its perimeter. We quote the opening, not just the leaf.

Typically 4–6 weeks to produce the assemblies once the shop drawings are approved, then 1–2 weeks to schedule the job and install them, depending on the size of the project. Matched veneers, factory finishing and combined fire-and-acoustic listings sit at the longer end, since all of that happens at fabrication rather than on site. Hanging one door and its seals is usually a day on site; a full fit-out runs over several weeks.