A period lobby and bar, without touching the fabric
Hospitality · design target set by guest experience, not a regulation
Illustrative worked example. This is a realistic brief run through Echo using the same method a real report uses — not an account of a named past client. See every case study for more, including which of these are real, permissioned projects as they're added.
The brief
The owner of an independent hotel in a converted Georgian townhouse had started seeing noise mentioned in review-site comments — always about the lobby and bar, always about not being able to hear the receptionist over the bar at busy check-in times.
Combined lobby and bar, ground floor
12 × 9 × 4.5 m, about 486 m³ — stone and lime-plaster walls, marble entrance flooring, ornate plaster ceiling, large sash windows.
Stone, marble and a high plaster ceiling put the room at roughly 1.4 seconds — lively enough to read as characterful for a few minutes, and tiring enough over a stay that it was showing up in reviews.
The standard, and the target
There's no statutory reverberation limit for a hotel lobby, so the brief was set by what the room needed to do: stay lively rather than dead, while letting a receptionist and a guest hear each other over a half-full bar. In practice that meant aiming for something closer to a well-run restaurant than a cathedral — broadly 0.7 to 0.9 seconds.
The constraint
The building's listed status ruled out anything fixed to the stone walls, the marble floor or the ornate ceiling — which eliminated the three largest surfaces in the room before the brief even reached a shortlist of options.
The decision
Everything proposed was freestanding or removable: heavy lined drapes at the sash windows, upholstered banquette seating replacing loose bar chairs, and a large wool rug across the seating area of the lobby — kept clear of the protected marble at the entrance itself.
Every route considered, vendor-neutral — we don't sell any of it.
- Lined drapes at the sash windowsabout 22 m²
Reversible, and in keeping with a period interior rather than fighting it.
- Upholstered banquette seating14 covers
Replaced loose bar chairs — a guest-experience upgrade that happens to be absorption too.
- Large wool rug, seating area onlyabout 30 m²
Positioned to leave the protected marble at the entrance completely untouched.
The outcome
The three changes brought the room from roughly 1.4 seconds to around 0.8 — close enough to the restaurant-comfort range that check-in conversations no longer have to compete with the bar, without a single alteration to the listed fabric.
Indicative figures for this example, from the same method a real report uses. Not a measured survey and not a compliance certificate — where one is required, that's a survey to BS EN ISO 3382-2.
Now do it for your room.
Four questions, sixty seconds. Free to see whether you have a problem.
Check my room →Questions people ask
Why no wall panels?
Every wall in the room was original stone or lime plaster under a listed-building consent — nothing could be fixed to them, which is why the whole fix had to be freestanding furniture and textiles instead.
Is 0.8 seconds an official target?
No — there's no regulation to cite here, which is worth being honest about rather than inventing one. It's a design judgement, informed by what a comfortable, lively hospitality space typically measures at.
Would this work in a modern-build hotel lobby?
The principle would, but a modern lobby usually has far more available surface (plasterboard, suspended ceiling, non-protected flooring) to work with, so the fastest route is often different — this example is specifically about what's left once the obvious routes are ruled out.