Acoustic Panels

This instructable shows how to build your own homemade acoustical panel for very little money. Acoustical panels are used to dampen noise reflections off the walls in a room. You can place them on walls to enhance the sound experience and improve the acoustics of a recording studio or listening room.

Tools:

• Saw
• Nail gun or hammer and nails
• Iron

• Staples and a staple gun

Materials:

• 1” by 2” wood furring strips (found at Home Depot)
• Wood glue
• A twin flat black bed sheet
• Foam or sound insulation
• 30 pound wall hanging kit

Cut 1” by 2” wood furring strips:

Two 25 1/8” strips

Two 37 3/8” strips

Glue and nail the frame together with the long strips on the inside.

Iron out a flat black twin bed sheet (only need half per panel)

Lay the sheet on a clean large surface. Fold sheet in half long ways and cut it in half along the fold line.

Place frame on sheet. Make sure the sheet is flat. There should be a little over 3” of space around the edges. The bottom of the frame should have enough fabric to fold over the back and have plenty left over.

Use foam or fiberglass sound insulation for the dampening material. You will need a 2’ by 3’ portion around 2” thick, cut slightly bigger so the material fits in snug.

Insert the foam or insulation.

Fold in the fabric using a staple gun to firmly staple the edges of the fabric to the inside of the frame. It’s ok to have to push down the foam/insulation with the staple gun. Don’t staple the bottom. Right now you should only have the top, left and right edges stapled.

Now it is time to fold the back of the panel over which will cover the rest. Make sure that when you staple the back you try to tighten down the fabric as much as possible. To staple the back, first go around the left and right sides stapling down into the frame leave around 3.5” between staples at this stage. You should be stapling both the back fabric and the side fabric by stapling down. Now that you stapled the back its time to give it a final tightening by going all around the inside of the frame, pushing downward hard and pulling the staple gun toward the frame (you will be using the staple gun upside down for this).

Now you should have staples along the inside of the frame and the fabric should be tight. Add a hanging kit (I used a 30 pound kit), hang it up and enjoy. For me, I had a leftover mattress pad so each panel only costs a little over $10. Even if your panels don’t function great acoustically at least they are cheap and for my room they added some much needed contrast for my walls.