The classroom had been a problem since the building opened. It sits at the end of a corridor, adjacent to the assembly area, with a high concrete ceiling and no soft furnishings to speak of. Every lesson was a negotiation between the teacher’s voice and the room itself. Students in the back rows were straining to hear. Teachers were raising their voices by mid-morning and finishing the day hoarse.
We are a private school in Sharjah. The classroom in question is a Year 4 room — around twenty-eight students, used for core subjects across the full school day. The acoustic problem was not new. What was new was a facilities budget cycle that finally allowed us to do something about it properly rather than just managing around it.
After researching options suitable for an occupied school environment, we came across desound and their PET acoustic panel range. The material itself — polyethylene terephthalate, made from recycled plastic bottles — immediately stood out as the right fit for a children’s learning environment. No VOCs, no fibreglass, no off-gassing. That mattered more to us than almost any other specification.
Why the material choice mattered in a school context
Schools have specific constraints that most acoustic installation guides do not account for. The room cannot be vacated for extended periods. Installation has to happen without leaving materials or dust that require cleanup before students return. And anything mounted at reachable height has to be safe if a child touches it, leans against it, or — in the Year 4 reality — accidentally kicks it.
PET panels address all of those constraints in a way that standard mineral wool or fibreglass-backed panels do not:
• No harmful fibres. Standard acoustic panels with fibreglass cores require careful handling and should not be accessible to children. PET panels are made from recycled plastic — there is nothing in the material that poses a risk if touched or bumped.
• No off-gassing in an enclosed space. A classroom with twenty-eight children and limited ventilation is not a place for materials that need to cure or air out. PET panels are inert — they go on the wall and that is the end of it.
• Impact-resistant surface. The panels we installed have a firm, slightly textured face. They do not dent easily, they do not tear, and they can be wiped down. For a school wall, that matters over a five-year horizon.
• Fire rating suitable for educational buildings. UAE school buildings are subject to specific fire safety requirements. The PET panels carry the appropriate fire classification and did not require any additional treatment or exemption process during the approvals stage.
What we installed and how the room was laid out
The classroom measures approximately 8 metres by 7 metres with a ceiling height of 3.2 metres. The primary acoustic issues were flutter echo between the two long parallel walls and low-frequency buildup near the front of the room where the teacher spends most of the lesson.
We installed panels on the rear wall and the two side walls, leaving the front wall clear for the display board and projector screen. Total panel coverage was calculated to bring the room’s reverberation time down to within the range recommended for primary school classrooms — around 0.4 to 0.6 seconds at mid-frequencies.
Installation details:
• Panels were mounted using a Z-clip system, which allowed precise alignment without permanent adhesive and means individual panels can be removed and replaced if needed without disturbing the wall surface.
• Installation was completed over one weekend. The room was fully ready for use by Sunday evening, with no residual dust, adhesive smell, or loose materials.
• Panel colour was selected to complement the existing classroom palette rather than contrast with it. PET panels take colour well and the finish is consistent across the range — what we ordered is exactly what arrived.
What changed in the room after installation
The difference was noticeable from the first morning the class returned. Not in a subtle way that required measurement to confirm — in the immediate, practical way that teachers and students noticed without being told anything had changed.
• The teacher reported no longer needing to project her voice to reach the back of the room. Normal conversational volume was sufficient. By the end of the first week she mentioned she was finishing the day less fatigued than usual — vocal strain is a real occupational issue for teachers in reverberant classrooms.
• Students in the rear rows were following lessons without difficulty. This was confirmed informally in the first parent-teacher session after installation — two parents mentioned their children had commented that class was easier to follow.
• Background noise from the adjacent corridor became noticeably less intrusive. The panels do not block sound transmission through the wall, but reducing internal reverberation made external noise less disruptive because the room was no longer amplifying everything that entered it.
• No maintenance issues in the months since installation. The panels have been in daily use with twenty-eight Year 4 students. No panel has shifted, no surface has been damaged beyond a minor scuff that wiped off cleanly.
What we would do differently
If we were starting again, we would have added ceiling panels above the front third of the room where the teacher stands. The wall treatment significantly improved conditions but the low-frequency buildup near the front wall would benefit from additional absorption overhead. It is a straightforward addition and one we are planning for the next facilities cycle.
We would also have done a baseline reverberation measurement before installation, so we had a before-and-after figure rather than a subjective comparison. The improvement is clear to anyone in the room, but a measured result would have been useful for the case we are now building to treat two more classrooms in the same block.
For schools and educational facilities in Sharjah and the wider UAE considering acoustic treatment for occupied classrooms, PET panels are the material that makes the most sense for a child-safe, low-disruption installation. The Acoustic PET Panels in Sharjah range covers the sizes and finishes needed for most classroom configurations, and the installation process is straightforward enough to complete over a single weekend without disrupting the school week.
You must be logged in to post a comment.