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 a two-surgery private dental practice, fitted out in a converted ground-floor shop unit, asked for options after a patient complained — fairly — that they'd overheard another patient's treatment cost being discussed at the desk from the far side of a six-seat waiting area. A second, quieter complaint was that the receptionist was constantly asking patients to repeat card-payment details.
Combined reception and waiting area
6 × 4.5 × 2.9 m, about 78 m³ — painted plasterboard walls, ceramic tile floor, plasterboard ceiling.
A small tiled room with plasterboard on every other surface sat at roughly 0.8 seconds — not extreme in isolation, but in a room this size that's enough for a normal-volume desk conversation to reach every seat clearly, which is precisely the privacy problem, not a reverberation problem in the usual sense.
The standard, and the target
HTM 08-01 isn't mandatory for a private practice the way it effectively is for an NHS one, but it was used here as the honest best-practice reference — the underlying problem (reception privacy in a small room) is identical regardless of who commissions the building.
The constraint
The unit's shopfront glazing was full-height and street-facing, non-negotiable for the practice's visibility on the high street, which ruled out the usual first move (heavy drapes across the whole frontage) as anything more than a partial contribution.
The decision
A low glazed screen at the desk, angled rather than square-on to break the direct sightline and sound path to the seating, is aimed at most of the privacy problem; ceiling tiles and a small run of wall panel behind the seating are aimed at the general clarity complaint separately. Privacy is not measured by reverberation, so check on site.
Every route considered, vendor-neutral — we don't sell any of it.
- Angled desk screen with acoustic core1 desk position
Targets the specific desk-to-seating sound path directly, not the whole room.
- Acoustic ceiling tilesabout 27 m²
General reverberation reduction, addressing the separate card-payment clarity complaint.
- Wall panel behind the seating runabout 6 m²
A smaller contribution, mainly softening the hardest remaining surface facing the desk.
The outcome
The screen is aimed directly at the overheard-conversation complaint. Combined with the ceiling tiles, the model predicts general reverberation would come down to roughly 0.5 seconds. How much overheard speech that removes would need checking on site. This is a design-stage prediction for an illustrative room, not a measured result.
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, about a minute. Free to see whether you have a problem.
Check my room →Questions people ask
Is a desk screen really an acoustic fix, or just a physical barrier?
Both, in design intent. An angled screen with an absorptive core is meant to interrupt the direct line of sound as well as the sightline, which is why it is aimed at the privacy complaint more directly than the ceiling and wall treatment are. How well it does so would need checking on site.
Would this suit an NHS practice instead of a private one?
The same routes would very likely apply — the physics doesn't change — but an NHS practice would be assessed against HTM 08-01 directly rather than by analogy.
Why not curtain the whole shopfront?
It was considered, but covering full-height street-facing glazing conflicted with the practice's need to be visible from the pavement — the desk screen is aimed at the actual complaint without that trade-off.