Solo Operable Walls vs Float Agile Sliding Panels - Which Is Right?
Solo Operable Walls vs. Float Agile Sliding Panels: Which Is Right?
Solo Acoustic Operable Wall 👆
Float Agile Sliding Panels 👆
Design Flexibility
Solo Operable Walls: These walls offer a high degree of design flexibility, allowing for a wide range of configurations and layouts. They can be customised to match any décor and can be finished with various materials, such as glass, wood veneer, or laminate. Typically, Solo operable walls come with high acoustic integrity, making them suited mainly for corporate meeting and boardrooms where sound privacy is essential.
Float Agile Sliding Panel Systems: Float systems also provide design flexibility, but with a slightly different approach. These panels are more slimline, and are designed to glide effortlessly along a track system, allowing for quick and easy reconfiguration of spaces. Float systems can create spaces in the open-plan, carving up zones and neighbourhoods to enhance space utilisation, efficiency and provide a great user experience. Float panels can also be customised with various finishes and materials, including writable surfaces, acoustic treatments and the ever popular perforated aluminium surfaces.
Ease of Installation
Solo Operable Walls: Solo walls are relatively easy to install, but they do require professional installation due to their complexity and the need for precise measurements. The installation process involves suspending head-tracks from the structural soffit or steel beam, which means that structural engineer input is sometimes required.
Float Agile Sliding Panel Systems: Float systems are designed for ease of installation, with a lighter weight track system that is also suspended from the structural soffit. However, as the panels are significantly lighter than Solo, the install process is simpler. This makes them ideal for buildings that don’t have a concrete soffit or steel structure to fix to – Float can be supported by timbers if needs be. However, as with Solo walls, professional installation is recommended to ensure proper functionality and performance – Creatif Wall provide a complete design, supply and installation service to ensure the process of installing top-hung moving wall and sliding panel systems is pain-free!
Acoustics
Solo Operable Walls: One of the standout features of Solo operable walls is their excellent acoustic performance. With various levels of sound insulation available, these walls can effectively create meeting rooms within meeting rooms, ensuring minimal noise transfer between areas. By applying fabric finishes to the Solo panels faces the acoustic integrity and absorption capacity of the system is enahcned further too.
Float Agile Sliding Panel Systems: While Float systems do interrupt sound transfer, they do not provide the same level of sound insulation as Solo operable walls, especially if the panels are ones with decorative cut-outs as displayed in the image above. Typically Float panels would have gaps between them because they are designed to work in the open-plan and to support collaboration and team work – their purpose is not to create an acoustically sealed space. However, with the application of acoustic treatments and materials to the panels, Float can still effectively reduce noise levels within a space.
Pricing
Solo Operable Walls: Due to their customisable nature and limitless configuration and finish options, its almost impossible to put a price on Solo. The system is costed per project and is very much subject to dimensions, quantity, specification, configuration and location.
Float Agile Sliding Panel Systems: Similarly, Float systems are subject to the same criteria as Solo.
Conclusion
In summary, both Solo operable walls and Float agile sliding panel systems offer unique benefits and features that make them suitable for different scenarios. Solo and Float really are not alternatives to each other – they are regularly implemented together into the same schemes because Solo compliments meeting spaces that require high-acoustic integrity whilst Float supports open-plan and collaborative situations. Solo walls excel in acoustic performance, while Float systems provide the ability to create agile spaces wherever there is track and whenever required.
Talk to Creatif to discuss how Solo and Float can support your workspace designs.