How To Easily Soundproof Your Home
No matter where you live, no one ever wants to deal with noisy neighbors. Your home should be your haven and the place where you can come and relax, and coming back to a home that has constant noise from your neighbors is never pleasant. If you are currently living in a building where only a wall separates you from your neighbors, the issue of noise can be all the more prevalent.
These days, builders are trying to save on every little thing, especially because of the high demand for buildings and homes to meet the growing population. Often, when constructing things like apartment complexes, builders try to make the walls as thin as possible. While doing this, they do save a considerable amount of resources that they would otherwise have to use, but this then means that the residents have to endure sounds coming from the neighboring apartments.
Having thin walls is not only bad because of the noise, but also when one starts to think about their own privacy. If you can hear your neighbors through your walls, chances are that they can hear you as well. Any conversation that you have is probably being overheard by the people next door, and this can be awkward, especially if you are talking about things that you wouldn’t want others knowing about.
Being mindful of your neighbors when living in an apartment complex is important, and something that can help you earn extra brownie points with your neighbors. By taking steps to ensure that the sound doesn’t travel through the walls, you are ensuring that your neighbors don’t get disturbed by your loud sounds and music.
There might be numerous issues that one faces as a result of thin walls, but the solution to all of these remains constant – which is to soundproof your home. There are two main routes that one can take when it comes to this. One option in this is to soundproof the home by yourself and the other is to call in a professional company to do the soundproofing for you.
Both of the options can ensure that the sound isn’t able to escape your home, and both of these can help you keep out the noises that are coming in.
In this article, we are going to go over some of the ways in which you can soundproof your home, along with the materials that you will need if you are planning to do this yourself. We will also go over a brief rundown of what to expect when going in for a professional soundproofing service.
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Ways To Soundproof Your Home
In this section of the article, we are going to go over some of the best ways to soundproof your home. These can easily be done with materials that you are likely to find at your local hardware store. Sometimes, you can take care of the noise coming into your home with simple items that you may already have in your home. Trying out these methods first before going in for other methods is always a good call.
1. The Funiture Method
One of the first things that you can do to be able to take care of the sound problem in your apartment is to try the furniture method. The furniture method is not an entirely efficient method and won’t completely take care of the problem that you are facing, but can be good enough to take care of the sounds that are entering your home. The idea behind this revolves around layering.
The basic reason why sounds tend to enter the home is because of the fact that the walls are incredibly thin within the home. This means that the sound is able to pass easily through this layering. In theory, if there were more layers in the walls, you wouldn’t have to soundproof it in the first place.
The furniture method works to create artificial layers that can trap the sound before they reach your ears. However, it is always hard to cover up every single wall in your home with furniture, which is why this isn’t the most effective.
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The best way to try out this method of soundproofing is to stack up whatever furniture you can against the wall that you share with your neighbor. Things like tall cupboards and storage cabinets are great for this purpose because they tend to have multiple layers of wood to trap the sounds and keep them out.
Something as simple as placing your couch against the wall of your home can help take care of the sounds and can ensure that a bit of it gets left out before entering your home.
2. The Blanket Method
Blankets are incredibly effective when trying to trap sounds and keep them out of your home. This, however, is not the most aesthetically pleasing option and is something that can take away from the look of your home. However, it is an inexpensive option that can help you soundproof your home with things that you may already have.
The idea behind the blanket idea is simple and something that many people do to soundproof their homes. Blankets are usually made of a thick fiber and contain multiple layers in between them. Blankets are also heavier and tend to have more mass in them. This means that when sound tries to travel through it, it is often interrupted and caught in between the layers of the blanket.
The simple way to test this out is to try and shout something into a blanket that has been folded up a number of times. You will notice that the sound on the other side is incredibly faint and almost unnoticeable.
The way to do this is to install hooks at the top of the walls in your home. Around three to four hooks should be good enough to hold a single blanket in place. You always have to use the thickest blanket that you can find to properly trap the sounds. To make it easier to hang the blanket, you can sew on curtain rings on the blanket and then hang these on the hooks.
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You can also install a curtain rod and use blankets instead of curtains to block out the sounds. If you don’t have a blanket that you can use, going in for a weighted blanket is always a good option.
If you are not too happy with the prospect of hanging blankets in your home and see this as one of the better options for you and your requirements, you can use this opportunity to get a blanket that looks like a piece of art of which has a good pattern on it to give your room a bit of color.
3. The Foam Panel Method
Foam panels are considered to be one of the most efficient and cost-effective methods of soundproofing a room and can be great for those who want to take care of the problem without spending too much money in the process. Foam boards are easy to find and don’t require much setting up to work.
An interesting fact about foam boards is that in many places, these are used to soundproof rooms that are given to bands and musicians who want to practice, and sometimes even in lower budget studios that are conducting recording processes. The importance of trapping out the sound is incredibly prominent in these instances, which is why you can be assured that this is a method that can work well for you and your soundproofing needs.
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The first step to doing this is to buy the foam boards that you need. To do this, you need to first measure the length and width of the wall that you want to cover. You can either choose to soundproof every wall of your room, or can choose to soundproof just the wall that you are sharing with your neighbor.
When buying foam boards, they usually come in a pack with tiles of a particular size. These sizes can differ depending on the kind that you buy. Always make sure that you have enough depending on the measurements that you have made and the area that you want to cover.
To install the soundboards, you first need to make sure that your wall is properly clean and doesn’t have anything on it. You can wipe it down with a regular cleaner or rubbing alcohol to make sure that it is completely clean. Once you have done that, make sure that your wall is completely dry before you start to stick on the tiles.
The tiles usually come with an adhesive backing. You will have to peel off the adhesive backing before you stick on the tiles. Make sure that you place them evenly because once you stick them, you cannot remove them and restick it.
4. The Drywall Method
The drywall method is good enough to trap out sounds, but may not always be good for those living in buildings. When going in for this method, one would need to contact a professional to construct drywall, unless you already know how to do this yourself. Putting up drywall is not the easiest, which is why it is not advised if you have not done this before.
An important thing to note in this is the impact that it will have on the space within your room. When constructing drywall, you would usually need to construct it to be least four to five inches in breadth to properly take care of the sound. This would make it so that your wall has the thickness that it actually needs to take care of the sound traveling through your walls.
When you do construct drywall, you are taking away from the space that your room has. This construction would leave you with around four to five inches less space on the side that you are building drywall on. If you are planning to construct drywall only against one wall in your home, the space taken up won’t seem as much.
However, if you are planning to construct drywall around the entire room, you will be losing a significant portion of this space. While this may seem like a small amount, in theory, it can be quite considerable once you actually put it into practice.
5. The Vinyl Method
Rubber is considered to be highly efficient for trapping out sounds and is the material that most professional recording studios use when trying to soundproof their rooms. The vinyl method functions just like the foam board method but is slightly more efficient in terms of sound trapping. However, this method is also more expensive.
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The best way to do this is to first measure the width of your walls that you need to cover. These vinyl sheets should ideally cover the entire room and should go over every part that one can hear the sound through.
Once you have done this, you can purchase the sheets depending on how much you need. Just like the foam method, you are also going to want to make sure that your wall is clean and is completely dry before you put on the sheet.
Once your wall is entirely clean and dry, you can start by putting on the Vinyl. You may need some help with this because the sheets tend to come in one big roll and this can be hard to manage all by yourself.
Some vinyl sheets come with an adhesive backing that you can simply peel off to take care of the sounds that are entering and exiting the room. If the roll that you purchased doesn’t have any adhesive, you may need to purchase one that is appropriate for this kind of home improvement. Once you have done this, you can place your furniture up against the wall for an additional layer of soundproofing.
6. Professional Soundproofing
Professional soundproofing is one of the most effective ways to take care of the sounds within the apartment, and also can take care of the sounds entering the apartment well. However, professional soundproofing might not be the best option because of a number of reasons. For one, professional soundproofing is always expensive and can cost a significant amount of money. One has to be ready to shell out a significant of money if they want the best kind of soundproofing for one’s home. The second reason professional soundproofing might not be an option is because of the fact that some buildings have restrictions on the kind of construction changes one can make in their home. This is even more prevalent for those who are living as tenants in a particular place.