Whole-Home Acoustics

Whole-home acoustics / WELL

Sound for people, not only for the cinema

WELL v2 Sound opens by identifying and regulating acoustic comfort parameters that occupants actually hear, to support health. Sound is human perception of mechanical vibration in air. Outdoor traffic and industry link to sleep loss, hypertension and weaker mental arithmetic in schoolchildren; night road and aircraft noise also to myocardial infarction. Indoors, HVAC, appliances and other occupants disrupt attention, memory and calculation. Impact sound — footsteps, exercise, plant — disturbs neighbours. Poor speech privacy, long reverberation and the wrong background level hurt intelligibility, especially for people with hearing loss.

WELL’s method: plan and commission HVAC for a stable background; strengthen the envelope against outdoor noise; add mass, glazing and door seals for privacy; replace hard surfaces with absorption; add sound masking if the room is too quiet. ZENE maps this onto homes and cinemas. Deep sleep also references Tsinghua’s about 32 dB; WELL S02 asks dwelling bedrooms for a 12-hour average (including 22:00–07:00) ≤ 35 dBA.

WELL v2 Sound features (as used on ZENE jobs)

• S01 Sound mapping (precondition) — mark loud zones (plant, kitchen, gym, cinema, social), quiet (sleep, restore, study), mixed (learn, meet) and circulation. If loud sits against quiet, replanning or isolation is required.
• S02 Maximum noise — meeting / learning / speech ≤ 35 dBA average (3-point tier); enclosed focus 40 dBA; open focus and dining 45 dBA, with dBC caps for low-frequency rumble.
• S03 Sound barriers — sleep / meeting to regular space STC / Rw 55; loud to other occupied 60; quiet to quiet 50. Doors STC / Rw ≥ 30 with seals on three sides plus the threshold. Field NIC is typically a class below lab STC; flanking must be closed.
• S04 Reverberation time — small meeting / learning ≤ 0.6 s; mid volume 0.5–0.8 s. Same order as 300–800 ms for homes.
• S05 Sound-reducing surfaces — open ceiling ≥ 75% at NRC 0.75; meeting ceiling ≥ 50% at 0.75, 25% of two walls at 0.75.
• S06 Minimum background — masking about 48 dBA in open quiet areas, 42 dBA in enclosed quiet rooms, so neighbouring speech is not crystal-clear in a dead space.

Materials: Bonda seals and damping pads pass hazardous-substance tests; Soundbox ceiling baffles formaldehyde < 0.005 mg/m³; Gabriel Cinema VOC not detected, flame B1. Handover can include a zone plan, field measurements and a note against WELL features — not only a material list.

Sources: IWBI WELL Building Standard v2, Sound concept and S01–S06; Tsinghua sleep / reverberation figures; China’s “Good Housing”. Walk the clauses against drawings on a visit.