What kind of soundproof wall should you choose for a hotel?

What kind of acoustic walls should you choose for a hotel?

: Acoustic walls for hotel guest rooms generally should have an STC rating of at least 50 for standard hotels, and STC 55-60 and above for upscale or luxury hotels that need to guarantee maximum privacy for guests. However, high STC walls alone are not enough for hotels, as the entire system must be considered together—including guest room doors, adjoining doors, corridors ceilings that often span multiple rooms, and other flanking paths unique to hotel construction.

Hotels are among the building types most sensitive to noise issues. Because guests stay in unfamiliar environments, they are much more sensitive to noise than they are at home. Even minor noise from neighboring rooms can lead to negative reviews that impact a hotel's reputation. This article explains how to select acoustic walls for hotels and highlights points that are often overlooked in hotel construction.

Recommended STC ratings for hotel guest room walls

The appropriate STC rating typically varies depending on the hotel tier and the expectations of the target guest demographic.

• Standard Hotels: Partition walls between guest rooms should have an STC of at least 50. This level makes normal conversation from adjacent rooms practically inaudible and is considered the minimum baseline referenced by many hospitality building standards.
• Upscale to Luxury Hotels: STC ratings are typically elevated to 55-60 to guarantee a higher level of quietness than standard. Guests in this segment generally have higher privacy expectations, and higher room rates come with correspondingly greater expectations for experience quality.

Walls alone are not enough; look at the whole system

What makes acoustic design more challenging in hotels than in other building types is the presence of specific flanking transmission paths common to hotel construction.

• Adjoining Doors: Most hotels design guest rooms to interconnect for families or groups traveling together. These connecting doors are often the weakest point in the guest room's acoustic system. No matter how high the main wall's STC rating is, if the connecting door does not meet the same standard, sound will primarily transmit through this door.
• Continuous Corridors Ceilings across Multiple Rooms: In many hotels, suspended ceilings over corridors in front of rooms often run continuously down the entire floor. If room partition walls are not built continuously up to the actual upper structural slab, sound from one room can travel through the plenum space above the ceiling to another room without passing through the partition wall at all.
• Back-to-Back Bathroom Walls: Arranging two guest bathrooms back-to-back to save on plumbing work often makes the wall in that area thinner than other points and features numerous cutouts for piping. This is another area that requires extra rigorous sealing checks.
• Impact Noise from Upper Floors: Footsteps or dragging luggage from guest rooms on upper floors are common problems in hotels. This is a different issue from vertical walls and must be solved specifically with impact isolation flooring systems.

Examples of acoustic wall systems from Trandar Acoustics for hotels

Trandar Acoustics offers the TSIS system under Trandar Hitech Wall, covering STC ranges suitable for various hotel tiers. For standard hotels, the TSIS53 d95 or TSIS56-58 (STC 53-58) systems typically perform well. For luxury hotels requiring maximum quietness, TSIS66 and above systems provide an even higher level of STC performance.

To address the issue of continuous corridor ceilings spanning multiple rooms, Trandar Acoustics offers the Trandar Hitech Ceiling system, specifically designed to block this type of flanking path. This has been implemented in real hotel projects such as Fairmont Bangkok Sukhumvit, which chose Trandar's Seamless Acoustics system for the lobby area to control both aesthetics and acoustic quality in high-ceiling reception spaces.

If you are planning a hotel project and need to design an acoustic system that comprehensively covers walls, doors, and ceilings together, feel free to chat with the Trandar Acoustics team to share your project details. We are happy to help analyze and recommend systems suited to your hotel tier and budget.