Can you build a telephone box yourself?

Dreaming of building your own phone box? We understand the appeal of the DIY idea, but most people underestimate what makes a professional phone box. For the impatient: You can find our DIY kit for a professional telephone box here.

More than just four walls

A professional telephone box is a small technical marvel and consists of many coordinated components:

Sound insulation: Good sound insulation is achieved by perfectly matching components - gaps and slits or doors that do not close completely tightly must be avoided at all costs during construction (more information at Sound insulation).
Ventilation: So that you always get enough fresh air and your body heat can be transported away (more information at Air exchange).
Lighting: For the perfect light for your video calls.
Motion detector: For automatic switching on and off of light and ventilation (more information at Ventilation control).
Glass door: One component that is usually underestimated is the door, which is made of (safety) glass in professional telephone boxes. This results in good sound insulation, but requires a fairly high weight and therefore stable hinges.

These features are not exactly easy to implement yourself, unless you are an unrecognised engineering genius.

The biggest challenges with do-it-yourself telephone boxes

According to our observations, the greatest weaknesses of self-designed telephone boxes are the following:

Plexiglas instead of real glass: Various instructions available online use door constructions with perspex windows. Plexiglas has the advantage that it is approx. 50% lighter than glass and easier to work with for hobby craftsmen. However, the law of mass applies to sound insulation: "the heavier, the better". This is why real glass is always used in professional telephone boxes (normally 6-8 mm toughened safety glass or multi-layer laminated safety glass)
Use of particularly favourable materials: The decision in favour of a do-it-yourself telephone box is almost always made for cost reasons. This is usually accompanied by the selection of particularly favourable materials. Anyone who has ever looked at the prices for wooden panels of different thicknesses in a DIY store will certainly understand the point: the law of mass also applies to wooden walls (see above for Plexiglas). Supposedly inexpensive do-it-yourself telephone boxes are therefore usually associated with a sacrifice in material and thus insulation function.
Ventilation not sufficient: With telephone boxes, two objectives come into conflict with each other: on the one hand, the box should be very soundproof, but at the same time not airtight - after all, you don't want to feel like you're suffocating in the box. Sufficient ventilation must therefore be planned into the design to minimise the impact on soundproofing. This is where most do-it-yourself projects fail.
Not all privacy screens are the same: Nothing is more annoying in a quiet office than a colleague who feels "unobserved" in a (poorly soundproofed) telephone box because of the four walls around him and starts making loud phone calls. Insufficiently soundproofed phone boxes can therefore, under certain circumstances and paradoxically, lead to more noise pollution.

The clever alternative: the DIY phone box kit

Our do-it-yourself kit is a cost-effective alternative to a complete self-construction: thanks to the industrial precision prefabricated components, you avoid all the pitfalls mentioned above and receive a professional telephone box including LED lighting, ventilation, motion detector, power supply, USB charging socket, glass door with magnetic locking and much more.

The telephone box kit is available at:

Kit in the online shop

Further, favourable alternatives

For more affordable alternatives, we recommend you take a look at our telephone and meeting boxes from the entry-level segment, in particular the acoustic cubes from the Bosselino family. It may also be worthwhile, have a look at our second-hand offers.