Q. What’s better than doing a great job?
A. Doing a great job while looking good doing it.
We build FSorb panels, from the inside out, to do a great job — to absorb sound better than any other product on the market. We also design our panels to answer another need — to look good as they shape sound. “Looking good,” for building products, means giving designers more choices.
That’s why we offer panels in up to 24 colors. It’s also why our customers have an array of possibilities for shaping and combining FSorb panels. Getting the best sound in a space shouldn’t require sacrificing appearance.
Now another visual feature we offer is growing in popularity: our wood grain finish. The growing popularity of wood grain sound panels aligns with a wider trend in interior design, a trend that favors natural finishes.
Why Wood Grain-Finished Sound Panels Are Popular
If you’re old enough to remember the faux wood paneling in living rooms — and even on the sides of some cars — in the 1970s and 1980s, this wood-grain trend may come as a surprise. After all, that type of paneling didn’t age well.
It turns out that designers from previous decades were onto something with all that wood. Recent psychological research shows that wood grain can be a powerful destresser. “When we see wood grain, our stress levels fall,” according to an article in Psychology Today. “It’s a particularly good design choice when relaxation is the goal.”
Unlike wood grain finishes from decades past, today’s finishes look more natural. Thanks to modern design techniques, today’s wood grain finishes imitate the look of real wood rather than repeating a predictable pattern.
Our wood grain finish enhances the effect all FSorb panels have on the soundscape of an interior space. This effect is to create a calmer, more peaceful space — a place that makes people feel more at ease and more productive.
Wood Grain: A Better Way to Achieve a Timeless Look
One of the knocks on wood grain finishes from years past: They weren’t real wood, and everybody could tell they weren’t real.
Of course, today’s wood grain finishes aren’t real wood either, and we’re OK with that. In fact, wood grain sound panels have some advantages over real wood as a design feature.
The first advantage is obvious: Wood grain-finished sound panels absorb sound. Like all FSorb panels, they preserve the acoustical frequencies you want to hear while minimizing distracting or stressful frequencies. Real wood, on the other hand, amplifies sound indiscriminately and can create a cacophony that makes concentrating and conversing difficult.
Other advantages of wood finishes aren’t always so obvious. These include:
Flexibility: FSorb panels can be cut, shaped, and combined to form a variety of visual effects. Designers won’t be limited by this medium.
Safety: FSorb panels with wood grain finishes don’t burn and, unlike many other sound panels, they don’t release volatile organic compounds into the air.
Ease of Installation: Builders won’t need to hire an additional carpenter to achieve the wood grain look. FSorb panels conform to building standards and are easy to install.
Ecological Responsibility: We use reclaimed plastics, rather than claiming new natural resources, to build FSorb panels. Plus, panels can be recycled later.
American Made: We design and build FSorb panels in U.S. facilities.
Building owners and project managers get these advantages along with the best acoustical sound shaping in the market.
Wood Grain Creates Value that Keeps Giving
The best building products can answer multiple needs at the same time. A lot of people call this kind of product “efficient.”
At FSorb, we prefer another word: “Value.” A product that has value gives back in multiple ways throughout the design and building process. A product with value also keeps giving back every day that it’s in use, for decades into the future.
Since its inception in 2009, FSorb has worked to provide this kind of value to the interior finishes marketplace. FSorb’s founder, Doug Bixel, worked as a builder and understands the need for building products that do their jobs without creating new complications for builders and designers to resolve.
Each FSorb panel comes out of the factory designed specifically to provide this kind of value to the customer. Our panels with wood grain finish deliver this kind of value while also adding yet another element to interior designers’ toolkits.
Wood Grain in Eight Choices — Or Bring Your Own Design
Our 2024 catalog includes eight different wood grain choices:
White Maple
Douglas Fir
Beige Maple
Clean Birch
Bright Hemlock
Washed Old World
Warm Walnut
Smoked Oak
Here’s how they look:
As you can see, these finishes can fit in with a variety of popular design trends. Combining these finishes with our other colors and textures can increase design possibilities exponentially.
Additionally, wood grain prints can be easily varied by printing on any of our 24 colors. For instance, white will print a true wood look based on the files created. Light Beige will slightly darken that color. Tan will darken it more. Light Grey will “weather” the wood grain. And Moss Green will produce a stained look to the wood.
Want more possibilities? You can send us a high-resolution image of the wood grain you’d like to use in your interior design. We can print the image directly onto our ½-inch thick panels without compromising their performance.
The Best Value Can Be Felt (and Heard, and Seen)
Loud spaces are overwhelming, confusing, and frustrating. Spaces where sound is properly shaped feel calmer. This calming effect makes people feel safer, happier, and more productive.
For restaurants and retail spaces — places where customers arrive voluntarily and choose whether to return based on their experiences — using sound panels to shape the acoustic environment creates value. Customers are more likely to return to places where they feel safe and at peace.
Calmer soundscapes also boost value for office places and waiting rooms since people feel more productive and at ease in calmer-sounding spaces. When employees feel more at ease, this tends to shine through their interactions with customers and patients.
All FSorb panels are engineered to provide this value. Panels with a wood grain finish take this value a step further, adding a more peaceful and natural appearance to the more natural soundscape of your indoor space.
Contact your local FSorb representative today to start designing the soundscape — and the look — of your next renovation or building project.
At FSorb, we are motivated by improving human health and do so by creating eco-friendly acoustic products. Our mission is to help designers build beautiful spaces that reduce excess ambient noise while calming the human nervous system. With over 25 years in the acoustic business we stand behind FSorb as a durable, environmentally friendly, and low-cost product. If you want an acoustic solution that is safe to human health at an affordable price, then we are your resource.
(844) 313-7672
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