Wall Panel 01WN Gold and Black Marble: planning a feature wall

Wall Panel 01WN - Gold and Black Marble is an acoustic slat panel listed at 60 x 240 x 1.5cm per panel, four panels to a pack, 5.76m² of coverage, with 2.5cm slats and 1.5cm between them over HDF slats on a felt backing. It is code AWS-WP022 in the Slat & Acoustic Panels range.

One wall, not four

Gold and black is a feature finish, and each panel is a full 240cm tall, so the wall it goes on wants to be the wall you look at: behind a bed, behind a sofa, a chimney breast, the wall facing the door. Panel all four walls of a small room and the dark ground and the shadow in every 1.5cm gap work together to take the light out of it.

Before you decide, stand at the door and look at what crosses that wall. A radiator, a light switch, the edge of a doorway and the line of a sofa back all interrupt a floor-to-ceiling pattern, and it is easier to move the panelling than any of them.

Panels and packs

Each panel is 0.6m wide, so the wall width divided by 0.6 and rounded up gives the panel count. Four panels make a pack.

A chimney breast is the awkward one: measure the face and both returns separately, because a return under 0.6m still needs a full panel cut down.

Planning around a television

This is the sort of panel that ends up behind a screen, so two things are worth settling first. One is where the bracket fixings land: a 2.5cm slat with a 1.5cm gap means a fixing point can fall on an open gap rather than on solid slat, and the listing does not say how the panel behaves if you cut or drill through the felt, so ask. The other is depth. The panel adds 1.5cm to the wall face, so an existing socket sits in a recess behind it unless it is brought forward, and cable routes need deciding before anything is fixed.

What the listing does not state

• Any acoustic figure. The description says the felt backing absorbs sound and reduces noise transmission, but there is no NRC, no αw value and no test standard. For a room with a target, ask for the manufacturer's data.
• How the marble pattern repeats. Whether the veining carries across panels or restarts every 60cm is not stated, and on a feature wall it is the detail you will notice most.
• What the gold and black finish is made of. The construction given is HDF slats and felt; the finish itself is not described.
• Fixing method. Not given on this listing. Ask what suits your wall, particularly if it is uneven.

Matching pieces, and ordering

If your ceiling is above 240cm, the same finish is listed longer as Wall Panel 02WN - Gold and Black Marble - 280cm, three pieces to a pack; ask for its coverage per pack, because three panels do not cover the area four do. For a flat, unslatted version of the same colourway there is Wall Panel 011C - Gold and Black Marble Wall Board, and the pale counterpart in the slat range is Wall Panel 01WK - White Marble. The listing also names a matching finishing piece, the Wall Panel PVC Trim Acoustic, sold separately. Adhesive for Wall Panels is a separate line too.

Photographs, the specification and a question form are on the Wall Panel 01WN - Gold and Black Marble panel page. Delivery is free within 50 miles of the Glasgow store and £50 beyond.