We live in a noisy world. Construction, sirens, the neighbors dog he leaves out all night and so on. A little soundproofing would help us to keep our sanity.
Soundproofing doesn’t have to be difficult. There are a number of steps that you, as a homeowner can take to create a barrier between the outside and the inside.
Install weather stripping on inside doors. We don’t usually weather strip the interior doors on our homes, yet those little gaps around the door let noise into an otherwise quiet room. So you’ll want to add some peel and press foam around the door frame. You can also add a doorsweep or draft stopper at the bottom of the door to reduce the noise level.
Soften up your walls. Smooth hard walls reflect and amplify sound, and soft materials reduce sound. To dampen sound you can hang blankets on the walls or install acoustic panels to your walls. You may have seen foam panels or ‘eggcrate’ panels on the walls of a music studio. These panels serve the purpose of reducing noise levels, as well as preventing sound from the musicians instruments from reflecting off the walls and adding unwanted elements to the recording.
Cover the floor. Hard flooring such as wood or tile can reflect sound in the same way as smooth walls do. You’ll want to throw down some area rugs or even wall to wall carpeting to reduce the noise levels in your room. If you’ve ever toured an empty house or apartment you likely notice the eerie echo. This echo is due in part to the lack of floor covering.
Secure furniture, electronics and other equipment that may move. Unsecured furniture and equipment can vibrate and add to the noise level. If you’re setting up an entertainment room, for example, those tower speaker that shake when you turn up the volume add to the ambient noise of the room, and reduce the fidelity of the sound you want to hear.
Don’t overlook your windows. Windows do little to stop outside noise from coming in. When sound waves hit glass, the glass vibrates in response. This means the sound from outside may be muffled a bit, but is otherwise unhindered. The easiest thing you can do to reduce noise coming through windows is to hang blankets over them. Another option is to install sound dampening curtains.
These are a few of the simple things you can do to reduce the sound level in your home. There are a few other steps you can take if you have the skills or can hire a contractor. You can install another layer of drywall, acoustic window inserts, or if you are building a new room or home, you can have a “decoupled wall” installed. To do this, resilient channels are installed on the studs then the drywall is mounted to the resilient channels. By doing this, sound is prevented from traveling through the structure.
If you found this helpful or something is unclear, let me know in the comments.
