Best way to soundproof glass for a French door?

[JanLH]

I am having custom interior doors made for my psychotherapy office. They will be double doors, about 27" wide and close to 8' tall. I would like to add frosted glass panels to the door (single panel, French door style), but I do not want to lose the soundproofing quality of thick (maybe 1 3/4 in.) solid core doors. Is there any way to add frosted glass and preserve the sound-proofing quality of the door? Should I use double pane tempered glass, with (argon?) gas in the middle of the glass sandwich. Or is impact glass better? Not sure that it can be frosted though. And it is much more expensive and heavy.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Laminated glass would be the more common choice for an interior application like yours. If you do go with an insulated unit, you want the largest airspace possible and you want the two panes to be different thicknesses. With either the lami or the IG, the higher you get the areal density the better off you are (in other words, the thickest glass and thickest lamination you can fit). If you are really concerned with sound transmission, you could always go for a double pane unit with a laminated outboard lite, but I'm guessing that would be overkill. The technical service department of your glass fabricator could probably help you design the optimum system.


There's no reason a laminated unit couldn't use frosted glass.

 

[IRstuff]

I'm unclear whether a gap larger than about 1/2-inch buys you much. However, a slightly thicker glass might.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

IRStuff is probably right, an airspace above 1/2 won't have too much impact, but you would see a noticable difference between 3/8 inches and 1/2 inches.

For an application like yours, a 6 mm glass / 12 mm lami / 6 mm glass unit would be pretty common.