Image: BHMA
In 2025, BHMA published a new standard to establish methods for defining levels of acoustic performance of door hardware. In the current issue of Construction Specifier, Tony Gambrall of BHMA tells us more about the standard, and why it’s important for evaluating hardware used on projects where noise is a concern.
Construction Specifier
Bringing acoustics to hardware: The science behind low-noise design
Increasingly, building projects are not only concerned with requirements such as safety and energy efficiency, but also occupant comfort. One aspect of this is noise. Noise from HVAC units, noise from other work areas, and noise from door hardware. How many times has a person’s concentration been disrupted at a meeting or conference by someone entering or exiting the room? It is essential to specify door hardware for those areas of the building that require an additional level of quiet. The Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association (BHMA) has undertaken the task of determining door hardware suitable for quiet environments with its new standard, ANSI/BHMA A156.42, Acoustic Performance Rating for Operational Noise of Architectural Hardware.
Click here to continue reading this article in Construction Specifier.
You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.
This is great new, and long overdue. Hardware noise is at least as important as STC rating of a door and is probably more important. Unfortunately no one currently lists to this standard in the BHMA Certified Products Directory. I hope to see that change soon.
A misconception about sound, doors and door hardware in hotels is that it’s more important to use high STC materials in a 4-5 star hotel than it is an a 3 star property. Usually the opposite is true. Sound decays proportional to the square of the distance, so a guest sleeping in a smaller room needs more architectural sound protection than a guest in a large room. That applies to the shotgun-racking automatic deadbolt noise on many hotel locks too. Hopefully it will be addressed by A156.42