6 Ways to Reduce Noise in Your Home
A peaceful home is a happy home. While we spend a lot of time contemplating the right furniture buys and color schemes in a bid to create a calming and welcoming place to live, we often overlook one crucial element: soundproofing. Noisy next-door neighbors, annoying appliances, and echo-inducing floorboards can very quickly ruin a home’s zen-like vibes. Thankfully, with the right sound-absorbing solutions, you can easily restore your home’s sense of peace and quiet.
Here, we list six soundproofing solutions for your home that don’t compromise on style.
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1. Seal your windows and doors.
Other than letting in unwanted drafts and insects, gaps in old windows and underneath doors can also invite unwanted noise from outside. While you can hire a professional to draft-proof your home, the cheaper solution is to do it yourself. Buy a silicone sealant from your local hardware store to repair cracks in windowpanes and fill gaps in between the glass and the frame. If you live near a busy main road, investing in fitted door and garage seals could dramatically reduce the amount of outside noise you’ll hear indoors.
Side bonus: Sealing cracks will also help your home stay warm in winter and cool in summer, saving you money on electricity from reduced heating and cooling costs.
2. Update your floors.
There’s nothing more irritating than a squeaking floorboard, but you don’t need to compromise on style to combat foot-traffic noise. Simply install acoustically engineered flooring that can act as a base for your chosen floor covering — whether that be timber, carpet, or tiles — while helping to deafen noise.
3. Rearrange your furniture.
Moving sofas from the middle of the room to the wall can help to absorb some of the sound that travels from the outside or adjacent rooms. Move rugs to rooms that receive the most traffic; shared spaces such as living rooms often generate the most noise and can benefit from extra sound-reducing surfaces.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
4. Load up your bookshelves.
Book-lovers, rejoice! If you needed an excuse to head to the book store and stock up on a stack of new titles, this could be it. Bookcases and the books you fill it with act as an extra barrier between rooms, ensuring that minimal sound is carried from one to the next. The more loaded your shelf is the better, so head to second-hand stores and garage sales and start stockpiling.
5. Soundproof your laundry.
Although not an area of the house we all spend much time in, washing machines and dryers can contribute to your home’s constant background noise. While you can invest in a brand-new machine manufactured to produce minimal sound, there are also some less-expensive options that will help get rid of those not-so-good vibrations.
Place shock-absorber pads and sound-absorbing mats behind and underneath your washing machine or dryer to lessen the movement heard from the next room; you can find both of these at hardware stores. Pro tip: Wash with a few less pieces in your load. The larger the load, the more noise it will make.
6. Add curtains.
Not only are curtains great for keeping in the heat during winter and out during summer, but they can also be an effective method of reducing noise. Particularly useful in homes with tiles and floorboards, curtains help to absorb a lot of the sound reverberation that bounces off hard surfaces.
Heavier and tightly woven fabrics such as velvet or wool work best. Choose a color that complements the space’s existing palette, or alternatively, go bold and opt for a contrasting color or print to add a statement to your room. Textured cushions and throws will also help absorb unwanted sound.
This post was written by CSR Hebel. For more, check out our sister site Homes to Love.
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