ROOM phone booths have been working hard in UK offices since 2018, and after years of daily use, many of them are starting to show it. With ROOM no longer offering any support in the UK following its 2023 acquisition by OFS Brands, owners are coming to us with the same two faults again and again: worn-through felt walls below the workshelf and integrated fans that have slowed down, clogged up and started making a noise nobody wants sitting next to them.
The good news: both are completely fixable, and neither means replacing your booth. Here’s what causes each problem and how we repair them.
Why ROOM Booths Are Wearing Out
There’s nothing wrong with the product—quite the opposite. ROOM booths get used constantly precisely because they work. A booth in a busy open-plan office might see 6 to 10 occupants a day, 5 days a week. That’s thousands of hours of feet, bags, chair movement, and running ventilation every year. Any pod would show wear at that rate—the difference with ROOM is that there’s no manufacturer left in the UK to call when it does. That’s the gap Installify fills, as we covered in our post on ROOM ending UK support.
Problem 1: Worn and Torn Felt Walls Below the Workshelf
Why the Felt Wears Through
This is our single most common ROOM service call. The acoustic felt panels lining the lower section of the booth—the area beneath the workshelf—wear through, fray and tear until, in the worst cases, the interior looks like something out of an Alien movie: shredded, clawed, and hanging in strips.
The lower felt panels take punishment that the upper walls never see. Shoes scuff against them whenever someone shifts on the stool. Laptop bags get wedged against them. Chair and stool edges rub the same spot thousands of times. And because felt is a soft acoustic material—chosen for sound absorption, not durability—once the surface fibres break, the tear spreads quickly.
Worn felt isn’t just cosmetic. Damaged panels absorb less sound, so the booth’s acoustic performance degrades, and a tatty interior undermines the professional impression the booth was bought to create—especially if it’s used for video calls.
How We Repair It
Because the felt fabric is glued directly to the panel, a worn-through section can’t simply be patched—and with ROOM no longer supplying parts to Europe, replacement panels aren’t available off the shelf. So we take a better approach: we trim away all the torn and frayed excess fabric to leave a clean, tidy edge, then fit a durable kickplate panel over the worn lower section.
The kickplate is available in two finishes: an MFC board (melamine-faced chipboard, colour-matched to complement the booth interior) or a lacquered steel plate for maximum durability in the highest-traffic booths. Either way, the result is a smart, wipe-clean surface exactly where the wear happens — so instead of replacing soft felt with more soft felt that will wear through again, the booth gets a permanent upgrade that shrugs off shoes, bags and chair edges for good.
Problem 2: The Integrated Fan Slowing Down and Getting Noisy
The second most common call: the booth’s ventilation just isn’t what it was. The fan runs slower, airflow drops, the booth gets stuffy on longer calls—and instead of the near-silent hum ROOM designed, there’s a rattle, drone or whine that everyone in the office can hear.
Why the Fan Clogs Up
ROOM booths continuously pull air through the unit, and with that air comes dust, fibres and everything else floating around an office. Over months and years, dust builds up on the fan blades, housing and vents. A clogged fan is unbalanced and works harder to move less air—which is exactly the combination that produces noise, reduced airflow and, eventually, motor wear and failure.
Ironically, the noise is often what gets it reported. A stuffy booth gets tolerated; a droning one gets complained about.
How We Fix It
In most cases, the fix is a full strip-down clean: we remove the fan unit, deep-clean the blades, housing and vent paths, check the motor bearings, and rebalance and refit the unit. Airflow and noise levels typically return to near-original performance.
Where the motor has worn beyond cleaning—usually after years of running while clogged—we replace the fan unit with a compatible equivalent, matched for airflow and noise rating. We test acoustic and airflow performance before we sign the job off.
Don’t Wait for It to Get Worse
Both of these faults follow the same pattern: cheap to fix early, expensive to fix late. A frayed felt edge becomes a full re-panel; a dusty fan becomes a dead motor. If your booth is showing either symptom, it’s worth booking a service visit now—and if it’s showing one, the other usually isn’t far behind. Our engineers check both (along with door alignment, seals, lighting and electrics) as part of a standard office pod service
