No one likes noise pollution, especially when they’re trying to get a good night’s sleep. But completely soundproofing a room can be difficult and expensive.
Thankfully, there’s a few easy steps you can take that will massively reduce the sounds that make into your room, as well as deadening any sounds that might occur from inside the room before they make it to the rest of the house.
If you want to soundproof your bedroom, here’s some simple steps you can take.
Set up some bookcases
The number one thing that absorbs sound is layers and thickness. A bookshelf stacked with books is an excellent, aesthetically pleasing, and really useful sound barrier.
You can also use bookshelves as normal shelves. Although bear in mind a lot of the sound blocking effectiveness will come from the thick layers of paper from the books on the shelves, so filling them with knick knacks instead will let through some sound.
Pay close attention to your door
If your house has a lot of internal sound, making sure that your door is sound proofed can block a lot of inbound noise. On top of this, there’s no point in soundproofing your bedroom and letting sound bleed through from the rest of your house.
Use a door sweep or weather strips
Sound travels through the air, so if your door has any cracks underneath or around the frame that air can come through, it means it’s not soundproof. A floor mounted door sweep, as well as some thick weather strips around the frame, can block out this air flow, which will make your room significantly quieter. A nice bonus is it will also hold the air in, making your bedroom less draughty and a lot warmer in winter.
If you’re doing this, you should also consider the door itself. Cheaper internal doors can be hollow, or semi hollow, and this internal cavity can echo and amplify sounds that hit it. If you’re serious about soundproofing your bedroom, a heavy internal door will make a huge difference.
Hang something on the walls
Half of the problem with unwanted sounds in the home is letting it echo around. Sounds echo off of large, flat surfaces,so bare walls are the worst. Instead, try hanging large art pieces on bare walls. You could also try a tapestry or a rug as a wall hanging.
As long as what you hang isn’t a flat plane, it’s going to absorb a portion of any sound that makes it into your bedroom, dampening its effects and making it seem that much quieter.
Acoustic foam
Whilst acoustic foam is ugly, there’s not much better for absorbing incoming sound. If you don’t want to ruin the look of your room, you could easily layer it onto the back of wardrobes, cupboards and other fittings to act as a second barrier for any incoming sound.
Make sure the windows are sound proofed
There’s two steps to this, one simple and cheap, and one much more expensive.
The first is to make sure that there’s no gaps in the seal. According to the professionals, even a 1% gap in the caulking sealant can let through as much as 50% of the incoming sound.
So first go round your windows, reseal them if necessary, and maybe invest in some weather stripping to make absolutely sure.
Second is double glazing. Double glazed windows can be quite expensive, but you should consider them an investment, as double glazing makes such a huge difference to a property.
This is because the air pocket in double glazed windows blocks a significant amount of incoming sound, and it also makes a hugedifferent in temperature control, reducing your energy bills by as much as 10%.
Sound proof curtains
We’ve saved one of the simplest and best methods for soundproofing a bedroom until last.
Sound proof curtains combine the best of almost every other method on this list into one simple package. Relatively inexpensive, but hugely effective and really easy to replace, sound proofed curtains should be the first port of call if you’re having sound problems in your bedroom.
Thick, heavy sound proof curtains can have a Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) of up to 0.70, which means that sounds hitting these curtains will be deadened by 70%.
Plus, soundproof curtains like this also usually act as blackout curtains as well, and light pollution is another reason people tend to have a bad night’s sleep.
If you’re looking at soundproofing your bedroom, the first step should always be to consider soundproof curtains, like the ones on this list.
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