Soundproofing your home

Unwanted noises in your home from the outside environment and from your own home can make your home a less comfortable place. Noises from outside traffic, household creaking and mechanical sounds can cause a homeowner to lose sleep and create a more stressful and less safe home environment. Your goal for your home should be to create a sense of calm and security in your home that is separated from outside noise and distractions.

accessories

The appliances in your home have a variety of moving parts, and all of them make noise. The goal with appliances is to find ways to make them as quiet as possible.

Washing machines, dryers, and many other appliances emit vibrations that create noise. If they are placed directly on your floor, these vibrations travel directly to the floor and the noise is amplified. Adding cork or rubber pads to the contact points between appliances and the floor can do wonders to muffle this noise. Additionally, you can significantly decrease vibrations by adjusting the leg levelers so they are evenly balanced. Also, moving refrigerators, washers, and dryers away from the walls will prevent the walls from picking up sound and amplifying it.

Window-type air conditioners are baggy, noisy, and poor sound insulators. Removing them and installing a central air conditioning system gives your home a more efficient and efficient air conditioning system that allows you to close your windows and better seal your home against noise. Another way to save money on air conditioning is to properly dehumidify the air in your home, since humid air is more expensive to heat and cool than dry air.

There is a wide range of noise levels generated by bathroom fans, dishwashers, and kitchen stove vents. The next time you need to replace them, be sure to check the noise rating levels (also known as sound levels) and select the ones with the lowest level. If you don’t see a rating, ask to hear the one in the showroom.

Doors and Walls

The best way to soundproof your walls is to build them with a solid, heavy material to muffle the sound that travels through it. Lightweight, flimsy, and hollow materials will not prevent sound from spreading through your home.

If your walls have already been built and you’re looking for ways to help muffle the sounds that travel through them, there’s still a lot to do. Adding insulation to your walls can help, if done right. Adding drywall is a poor decision, as its rigid material is not strong at sound deadening, and the space behind the drywall can create an acoustic chamber. Make sure all holes and cracks are covered when insulating, even a small gap will allow noise to enter. Even attics can allow sound into your home and could benefit from proper insulation.

Adding mass to your walls can also help. If you have a wall that faces a particularly busy or noisy street, it may help to fill that wall with dense material. Hollow walls can be soundproofed by adding injected blown foam insulation. The rough surfaces in your room will muffle the sound. There are acoustical sprays available that can give your walls texture and absorb sounds that strike them.

When installing doors, choose heavy solid core doors over lighter hollow core ones. Hollow doors with an interior space are filled with air, allowing sound to travel through them easily. Making your doors airtight will go a long way in insulating and soundproofing your home. If you’ve been putting off lubricating your squeaky door hinges, there’s no better time than the present to calm them down!

windows

Most of the sound that enters the house enters through the windows. Check your windows and see if there’s anywhere air can get in; those will be the points where the sound enters the most. Seal any of these cracks and gaps with flexible polyurethane or latex caulk. This is a great way to make your home more energy efficient too! The US Department of Energy reports that home energy bills can be reduced by 30-40% if all windows are sealed in cold weather. Installing weather stripping and shutters will do wonders for your home’s energy efficiency and will make your whole house quieter. Double-pane, vinyl-framed windows are better for sound and can be more than twice as strong for thermal insulation!

Stairs and Floors

The first thing to do if you have a squeaky stair is to find out if a tread is rubbing against the riser or if you have a cracked or detached stringer. To find out, move back and forth on each tread. The ones that squeak are coming loose and can be easily repaired. If they all squeak, the spar may need to be repaired or replaced, which can be a significantly longer procedure. Stairs are most easily fixed from under the frame, but either way, a few well-placed nails, screws, and hardwood shims can fix the problem.

Over the years, the floorboards in your home can eventually come loose from continued use. When they do, the loose nails in the floor will rub back and forth, creating a great deal of noise. Nailing these boards back is the best answer to your problem. With the help of specially created nails, you can even secure the floorboards directly onto the carpet.

Carpets, Fabrics and Cushioning

Adding soft materials to a room is one of the best ways to absorb sound in your home. Carpeting on a floor is much quieter than wood or tile, and adding a thick, heavy rug to your floor will soften footstep sounds and muffle any sounds in the room. Padded, padded furniture will calm noise in a room, and hanging thick, high-quality drapes on the windows will do wonders to quiet your home and enhance its appearance. Adding rugs to your stairs will soften the sound of climbing the steps and make them more attractive and less slippery.

On upper level floors, carpeting with a thick pile or pad will soften noise traveling through the floor to the lower level ceilings. If you’re looking for a cheaper way to quiet your home, we recommend against general purpose rugs, but a rug with an attached padded backing is a strong and inexpensive option, although it shouldn’t be installed on stairs.

Other areas in your home

Sound will travel in and through your home in a variety of ways. Along with the ideas we’ve already shared, we have these home improvement tips to make your house as quiet as possible:

• Installing a suspended ceiling that is equipped with a heavy, rigid board (not flexible fiberglass) will absorb sounds at lower levels.
• Noise can easily travel through your home via metal joists, ductwork, and pipes. Cover these surfaces with rubber or elastic materials to keep them as quiet as possible.
• Seal all pipes and wires where they enter your home with caulk or expanding foam.
• Make sure all outlets and breaker boxes are sealed, especially if they are next to each other.
• Check for kinks and kinks in flexible supply tubes on noisy faucets or toilets; the water that passes through these points generates a great amount of noise.
• Add caps to your chimneys to prevent sound from traveling downward.
• If you feel like your computer is making too much noise, use a can of compressed air to blow all the dust out of the fans and vents. If you’re comfortable with it, open the computer and spray all the powder away with short bursts of air. Doing this periodically will quiet the fans by removing debris from moving parts and will greatly increase the life of your computer by protecting it from overheating and static electricity from dust.
• White noise can muffle unwanted external noises. Before you buy a white noise machine, consider other ways to add white noise to your home. Installing a ceiling fan or adding an aquarium to your home can beautify your home while adding quiet, comfortable sound. CDs are also available that offer different varieties of white noise, including sounds of nature.