An expert weighs in on the ways you can make your home sound-proof. Advance File Photo. Noise disturbs our sleep, adds to our stressful lives and infringes on our privacy. Whether it be the sound of phones ringing, construction, traffic, airplanes flying overhead, or music, it seems that noise is everywhere.
A peaceful home is a happy home, but is your home quiet enough to be peaceful? Or do you still hear honking cars outside, or your children playing video games in an adjacent room, or a noisy neighbor above or to the side of you? Is noise entering your home through the windows, your walls or floors? How can you just sit in a room without hearing anything else but your heart beat? The answer may not be as simple as you would like.
Open floor plans, lightweight construction, hard surfaces and high-tech audio equipment play a significant part in conducting noise. As such, our awareness of noise has heightened and home soundproofing has become more popular. Not only to keep the noises out, but to keep the noise in; as is the case when building a home theater or music room.
During new construction, soundproofing is an easier task, because walls are open. This can save time and money. Choices for soundproofing in new construction include using denser insulation between walls and floors, or using thicker drywall material, or adding a second layer of drywall, with a noise-proofing compound between the sheets for new construction homes that may already have drywall installed. Adding an acoustical sealant where the corners of the drywall meets, or around outlets can provide additional noise reduction.
Materials used for sound proofing are rated to measure their effectiveness. No matter where you live, life can be noisy. If it's not planes, trains or cars assaulting your ears, it could be the neighbours, a barking dog or the demanding blips of technology. Soundwaves are able to enter the home through windows , doors, floors, walls and ceilings, so your goal is to block them out. Inside the house, the challenge is to dampen or absorb noise.
Contemporary building design can sometimes work against us in this regard. Open-plan layouts and hard flooring look fantastic, but they don't absorb noise well. There are, however, many approaches you can take if a quieter life appeals.
There's good news for anyone who is building or renovating: you have the opportunity to soundproof your home. If you're living in a multi-dwelling situation or you're located near a train line, airport or busy road, you will need to explore noise-blocking building materials.
For standalone homes on most residential streets, the use of double-brick will block external noise effectively. For all other finishes, added insulation should do the job. A few simple design strategies will keep noise under control, says Sydney architect Danny Broe.
But people often ask if putting foam acoustic panels or tiles on walls will help reduce noise from neighbors or the neighborhood. Sound deadening acoustic panels offer studio-quality sound proofing.
These home-theater style soundproof foam tiles are available in lots of colors. Shop for sound proofing acoustic deadening sound tiles on Amazon. Because foam acoustic panels and tiles are often applied to surfaces as a finish material, they come in a variety of colors and styles. If two walls are not parallel with one another, sound is less likely to ping pong back and forth.
This explains why uneven, angled, curved, or ridged soundproofing materials are popular in environments where noise reduction is key such as recording studios, home theaters, and music practice rooms.
A good place to start is with soundproofing acoustic panels or sound deadening tiles like the ones shown and discussed above. The uniformity of a wall or ceiling surface affects its sound transmission characteristics. Flat surfaces tend to bounce sound waves around, sometimes creating a lasting echo effect if the surfaces or walls are hard—and especially if they are directly parallel to each other. The less uniform the surface, the less opportunity the sound has to bounce. To block noise coming from outside a room, such as traffic noise or noisy neighbors, you need materials that have a lot of mass.
They will work as a sound barrier to minimize sound transmission. Sound blocking materials prevent noise from traveling through walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and floors. Materials that stop sound are typically dense, heavy, thick, or—in some cases—flexible.
Generally speaking, they are too dense for noise to travel through them. A inch-thick brick wall is a good example of a sound blocker. But thick brick walls are rare. Most of us must turn to other materials and methods to achieve effective sound blocking.
The principle that greater mass increases sound blocking holds true for windows and doors, too. Using double- or triple-glazed windows or solid-core doors dramatically increases their ability to block sound. Sound blocking methods. The most effective sound blocking methods involve building what are effectively double walls.
More about these below in Soundproofing a Wall. If walls are closed up, you may need to tear them open to modify or retrofit them. If you own your home, the effective, permanent solutions discussed below are possible if you have the budget. See Apartment Noise Solutions. Doors play an integral role in controlling the movement of sound through a house.
Selecting the right doors is one of the easiest and least expensive soundproofing measures you can take to block sound. Doors are typically the thinnest barrier in a wall. Noise just easily passes right through them. You can add significant sound control simply by replacing a hollow-core door with a solid-core door.
Hollow-core doors are the most typical, ordinary flush interior doors in houses. The surfaces are faced with very thin wood veneers. Solid-core exterior or interior doors have, as their name suggests, a solid core of wood or composite material. They will block noise more effectively because of their density. Manufacturers sell many types, ranging from expensive hardwood to more affordable Medium Density Fiberboard MDF doors.
A hollow-core interior door has an STC of less than If you were to replace that door with a solid-core door that is properly weather stripped, you would end up with an STC rating of 34 to This would block low speech, but not loud speech or other noise. The thicker the door, the better it reduces noise transfer. Sound-blocking doors. You can actually go one step further than a solid-core door and buy a sound-blocking door.
A door that contains lead will be much heavier than a conventional door. They are often sold as kits that include jambs and integral interlocking thresholds and sweeps to keep sound from leaking-in around them. Similarly, if gaps exist around the edges or between the bottom of the door and the floor, sound easily sneaks in around the door.
So the door should fit the jamb tightly. Use weather stripping to seal around its edges. Rubber or vinyl bulb door weather stripping and a door-bottom weather stripping sweep do a good job of sealing around the perimeter of a door to block noise. Shop door weather stripping and door sweeps on Amazon. You can buy recording-studio-grade door noise-reducing materials online as an acoustic door seal kit. Keep in mind that most soundproofing techniques used for walls also work for ceilings.
Unfortunately, conventional walls and ceilings are only marginally effective at blocking noise because they are built like drums. The spaces between the studs are filled with air or, in some exterior walls, insulation. Of course, where wall surfaces are thin or nonexistent, such as at an open window or doorway, noise flows freely. The variance depends upon construction and whether the wall contains fiberglass insulation.
These have STC ratings from 40 to the high 60s, depending upon the number and thickness of drywall layers and the addition of insulation between the studs. Mass-loaded vinyl , discussed below, contributes an additional STC rating of from 25 to If you are building or remodeling a home, you have an excellent opportunity to install significant noise control measures, including insulation between the studs and several acoustic construction techniques discussed below.
During building or remodeling, an effective and affordable way to improve the soundproofing performance of walls and ceilings is to put batt or blanket insulation between studs or joists. Insulation absorbs the sound that would otherwise easily travel through the air pockets between wall framing. These products are excellent at absorbing the sound that would otherwise travel through the air.
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