The most common noise complaint in senior housing facilities is the noisiness in the dining room. A long reverberation time (how long it takes for sound to decay) due to hard reflective surfaces degrades the perception of speech intelligibility, particularly for elderly people. For satisfactory speech perception, amenity spaces like dining rooms and lounges should have adequate sound absorption. Another common noise complaint is footfall impact from upper floors to lower floors from wheel chairs and walkers when flooring is a hard finish, like hardwood or tile.
Project
Senior Housing
Although we naturally lose hearing as we age, we actually become more sensitive to the sounds that remains audible. As a result, the room acoustics and noise isolation that is appropriate for spaces designed for seniors are more stringent than that for younger people.
