My family just moved into a new house our family room and informal dinning room are side be side with no divide, these two rooms have ceilings about 25 ft high on one side there are three openings like windows from our second story game room any noises that occur in the family room, dinning room, or game room, all echo over the family room and dinning room like it is trapped and no noise goes into the game room. TV, conversations, pool balls, arcade games it is all one great big shouting match. What can I do to stop the echo, Help Me!!!
You need rugs, carpet, draperies, fabric upholstery on the furniture and maybe some tapestries hanging on the large walls. Any thing made out of fabric will absorb the sound and cut down on the echo.
Apart from carpet, a tapestry helped a lot in one of our rooms. Trying to find tapestry is a joke, though, unless you like medieval battle pictures or flowers. They tend to be pretty pricey, too. We were looking for something a little less castle-themed, so we picked out a heavy upholstery fabric we liked and sewed another upholstery fabric around it for a border. Looks great, was cheap to make, and our room doesn't look like it came from the 14th century.
We're afraid we'll encounter this with my new piano studio, as we took out a wall & removed the carpet. We actually contemplated lining the walls with cork laminate floor for sound control. Needless to say, that was way too costly (but would have been neat looking as well as functional). Instead, we're going to try it without any rugs, and deal with it later if we need to. A little echo would actually be nice, a lot not so much.
Actually you don't have to go with just a tapestry for the wall hanging, there are many really pretty area rugs that can be hung on the wall too. Animal themes, geometric designs, floral, etc...even a quilt that grandma made can be hung on the wall if you do it properly.
