Ecophon panels to the rescue of modern and intimate dining

These days, many restaurants struggle to find the right balance between achieving an ultra modern feel through the use of exposed concrete floors and minimal soft furnishing, and providing a welcoming environment, where patrons can dine and converse easily. In too many cases, it’s the atmosphere that loses out, as patrons struggle to hear themselves think or talk above the ever increasing noise reverberation.

One restaurant which has recently successfully overcome this challenge is Baldovino’s, a family run café and restaurant in Melbourne. Owned by Jim Bakos and Mark Averte, the restaurant has been in business for over 40 years and specialises in serving local produce within an intimate setting. Baldovinos has a minimalist, yet inviting design with polished concrete flooring and a combination of glass and plasterboard walls. Jim Bakos comments, “We soon began to realise that when they we operating at full capacity, the acoustics in the room were insufficient and detracted from the full dining effect that we had envisaged and desired.”

“We decided to get in touch with CSR who was able to come up with the perfect solution to our issue. CSR specified Ecophon Focus F panels as they can be directly fixed to battens, plasterboard or concrete soffits, creating a smooth appearance, and meant we wouldn’t have to completely re-sheet the 40sqm ceiling,” says Jim.

Plasterer, Paul Lockyear from Box Plastering, has installed Ecophon before but was still impressed with the immediate acoustic results in the dining room.

“Ecophon is really simple to install. Setting up takes a bit of time like most products, but once it is installed, which is easy, the results are amazing. The sound was incredible immediately, there was not one echo in the place after we installed the ceiling tiles”, says Paul.

The owners have been equally impressed with the immediate results. Jim adds, “We are over the moon with the instant improvement. The Ecophon panels have done exactly what we wanted. The restaurant was noisy at the best of times and when it was busy it was just too loud. The panels improved the noise instantly.”

Ecophon Focus F panels have a tongue and groove edge which allows good alignment on installation, while the bevelled edges create a narrow groove between each tile. The panels are designed to be installed directly with screws and adhesive, and are non mountable.

In addition, a suspended ceiling framing system is not required, which ensures there is no loss of ceiling height.

The tiles are manufactured from high density glasswool. The visible surface has an Akutex FT coating and the back of the tile is covered with glass tissue. The edges are reinforced and painted with a weigh of approximately 2.5kg/m².