If you have loud, noisy neighbors, you might be wondering how you can soundproof your apartment. Or if you have roommates, you might want to learn how to reduce noise between rooms in your apartment. Here's what you need to know about soundproofing an apartment.
How To Soundproof a Room in an Apartment
- Make It Hard For Sound Waves To Travel
- Keep Sound Waves From Reflecting
- Make Your Home Extra Quiet
- Install Soundproof Room Dividers
Make It Hard For Sound Waves To Travel
The best way to soundproof your room is to make it hard for sound waves to travel. The easiest way to ensure sound waves don’t carry into other rooms is to reduce the number of ways that sound waves can leak out. Here’s how to prevent noise from traveling in or out of a room.
1. Weatherproof Your Doors and Windows
Insulation is going to be the name of the game for you, especially if you have wooden floors. If you can upgrade your windows or add a door sweep, do it. This will help prevent the air from carrying sound waves out of your room.
2. Put Weatherstripping On Your Windows
Weatherstripping is a type of tape that is meant to block airflow from the outdoors to your window. Though it’s mostly a way to insulate your windows, it also happens to be a great way to block out soundwaves that could come from outside.
3. Add Drapes To Your Windows
Curtains help muffle sound and add a little extra insulation to your room. The end result? A slightly quieter home. If you want additional protection, use soundproofing curtains. They are specially made to help reduce sound without looking like eyesores.
4. Get a Bookcase Or Cabinet
The furniture will act as a buffer between your wall and the source of the sound. This means a bookcase or cabinet will absorb a lot of the noise that would directly hit your walls instead.
5. Add Padding Near Door Cracks
Sound waves can easily travel between rooms under door cracks. By adding padding you will muffle the soundwaves and keep them from reflecting down hallways. A draft protector is more than enough to help this out.
6. Seal Any Holes In Your Walls
Even tiny holes can let soundwaves escape from a room. Patching the holes you find up is the best way to prevent sound from leaking out, so grab some spackle and start patching things up.
Keep Sound Waves From Reflecting
Have you ever been inside a room where you could hear every single footstep that you made? If so, you understand why soundproofing a room means you need to reduce the amount of reflection that sound can make. Thankfully, this is pretty easy to do as most materials will absorb sound and keep it from reflecting.
1. Add Carpeting To Your Floor
One of the best ways to reduce sound between rooms is to add carpeting. If you’ve ever worn heels on a wooden or concrete floor, you already know that wood carries sound very well. You can avoid that acoustic cost by keeping a rug in that area.
Along with covering your floors to muffle noise, get carpet pads. These can make a huge difference in how well your carpets can absorb sound.
2. Get Studio Soundproof Padding For Your Walls
A little bit of padding can go a long way. Acoustic panels will absorb soundwaves and nullify the chances of reflection. If you have an in-home recording studio, they’re practically a must-have.
3. Don’t Put speakers Directly on Your Floor
If you’re playing music inside your home, the easiest way to avoid having sound reflect and reverberate off your floor is to avoid placing your speakers directly on the floor. At the very least, put a rug underneath your speaker.
4. Get a Ceiling Tapestry
The more your walls and ceiling are covered, the less reflection you’ll have. If you don’t feel like adding studio panels to your ceiling, adding a tapestry can reduce the reflection.
Make Your Home Extra Quiet
If regular soundproofing methods don’t work, you might need to go a little harder on your soundproofing. These tips below will make the most of your efforts:
1. Get Window Panels
Soundproofing window panels will block your view of the outdoors, but they also will prevent sound from becoming a nuisance. Many people might not be too fond of an obstructed view, though. So, it may be best to use these soundproofing panels as a last resort.
2. Add Insulation to Your Ceiling
If your landlord will allow it, a good way to make your home even more soundproof would be to add insulation to your ceiling. You can do this by adding acoustic foam paneling to the ceiling.
3. Paint Your Walls With Sound-Reducing Paint
Another option for soundproofing your apartment is painting. Most people aren’t aware of this, but there is such a thing as sound-reducing paint. It’s affordable, can look pretty great, and, yes, works wonderfully as a way to reduce noise between rooms.
4. Ask Your Neighbors to Help
Worried about neighbors getting upset? Suggest that they get carpeting for their floors to help reduce the amount of sound that ekes through the ceiling to their floors. Even a small throw rug can make a difference when it comes to soundproofing.
4. Install Soundproof Room Dividers
Another way to soundproof a room is to install soundproof room dividers. They can be a great solution if you're looking for a more portable option to reduce noise between rooms. You can go with acoustic panels, which can also partition a room or soundproof curtains. What's nice is that you'll be able to take them with you whenever you move, so you'll easily be able to soundproof your future apartments.
Soundproofing a Room Bottom Line
Soundproofing a room in your apartment isn’t a quick fix, but it doesn’t always have to mean that you will need to spend months fixing things up. Heck, if you are not making too much noise, chances are that you might not even need to get specialized foam pads for your walls.
Between the use of weatherproofing materials, soundproofing paint, and even doing things as simple as adding a bookcase to your walls, you can significantly reduce the amount of reverb that your home gets. This, of course, will lead you to having happier neighbors and a happier landlord.