Soundproofing Walls: The Easiest Way
Soundproofing walls is a wonderful value-added upgrade to make to your house if you are constructing a new home, completing a basement, or considering renovating. Your soundproof walls will improve your day-to-day home life. Rooms that used to be sources of noise may now be isolated, while rooms that should be soothing have the opportunity to do so.
It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on wall soundproofing, but you must have realistic expectations. Nothing compares to a professional’s work, but we’re talking about DIY soundproofing in this article to help you save money!
If you’re performing the project on your own, make sure you’ve done your homework and are familiar with the products and soundproofing principles. You may get pleasing results without breaking your wallet by following these instructions on how to soundproof a wall and utilizing suggested soundproofing materials. Let’s start!
What Is the Purpose of Soundproofing the Walls?
Most individuals have soundproof walls to prevent noise from entering or leaving their room. When compared to the rural lifestyle, subdivisions are noisy, but apartments and multiplex houses are much worse. Most of us require a peaceful environment in which to sleep, recover, and re-establish our mental equilibrium so that we do not get too fatigued, irritable, or agitated. Being assaulted with noise isn’t very relaxing if your home has paper-thin walls or isn’t adequately insulated.
It’s all about peace and quiet. Few of us, especially in our homes, prefer to sleep with earplugs or have to shout to be heard! To put things in perspective, a silent room has an ambient noise level of about 20 decibels, which is about 1/16th as loud as a normal discussion at 60dB; or the average office. We all require a relaxing place. We can remove the noisy mayhem out of our living environment and make it a more serene and healthy place with some thinking, design, right materials, and sensible habits.
Related: Why We Need Less Noise
Understanding STC Ratings
Before you proceed with soundproofing a wall, you must understand this first. A Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating is commonly found on soundproofing materials. A product’s STC rating indicates how many decibels of noise reduction it offers. The better, the higher the STC rating.
The noise appears to have been decreased in half with a 10 STC improvement. A rating difference of 3 STC or less, on the other hand, is almost unnoticeable and should be considered when comparing products.
Cheap Way in Soundproofing Walls
These methods are really easy and just require a little rearranging of things as well as some basic household supplies. It isn’t as successful as the somewhat more expensive techniques listed below, but it will get you started if you also utilize quiet items like the best quiet mechanical keyboards or a silent mouse.
This is primarily for quick repairs and emergency situations than for long-term solutions. These stages can be completed independently of one another, so you can perform one or more of them.
1. Increase The Density of the Walls, Doors, and Flooring
As you might expect, this stage entails adding mass to the doors in the form of noise-reducing curtains, blankets, sheets, soundproof paint, and other sound-absorbing materials. This won’t look nice, and you’re unlikely to be able to stare at a pile of pinned-up blankets for very long, but it appears to work.
Simply gather the thickest, heaviest blankets you can and tack them to the walls to cover the whole area. But we’ll tell you now: the room you’re soundproofing will grow hot, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The final step is to purchase a rug or carpet! Carpets and rugs are excellent for soundproofing floors and improving the acoustic quality of a space. Most likely, you’re soundproofing for an audio-related cause, such as constructing a studio or attempting to control the noise from your drum set.
Having a carpet, on the other hand, can assist with all of that. The sound bounces about the room LESS and exits the room through the floor LESS, yet carpets and rugs aren’t all that costly.
2. Install Additional Drywall
Sound is made up of vibrations. Heavy, thick materials that stop noise in its tracks are excellent for dampening vibrations. Brick and stone are wonderful for heavy walls, but they’re not practical for upgrading your interior walls. Adding a second layer of drywall to create a thick, sound-deadening barrier is the simplest solution (read more about drywall on homestratosphere.com).
You don’t have to put drywall all over the place to isolate the noisy room from the quiet room. You’ll have to repair and repaint your new drywall, as well as maybe expand electrical outlets and switch boxes, but these are all pretty simple and low-cost DIY projects.
Video: How to Soundproof a Wall BEST Drywall over Drywall! Double Drywall
3. Use Caulk or Soundproofing Sealant to Fill the Gaps
Sound can escape through even the slightest holes and crevices. A large tube of acoustic sealant, which is ideal for sealing cracks and gaps in the corners of rooms and around the edges of walls, can be purchased for less than $30.
When you seal the entire room, it makes a huge impact, especially if your room has a lot of wooden edges and gaps where sound may escape. It also aids in the sealing of gaps surrounding the door frame (if any exist), as sound can pass through them.
4. Fix Any Sound Leaks
Now all you have to do is go around the room and repair all of the “sound leaks.” Light switches that have fallen loose, windows with gaps, or loose floors that can be glued down are all possibilities. Consider sound as water or mist, and consider all the ways it may exit the room. Then use items like to fill up the spaces.
- Duct tape (one of the most cost-effective and durable soundproofing options!)
- Use sealant (many purposes, always useful)
- These under door strips, like the ones we discussed earlier, can also be placed on the sides of doors if they have gaps on the sides (some old doors are like this)
5. Fix The Doors with Strips
As we always say in Silence Wiki, sound travels in a variety of ways, but one of the most typical ways for sound to exit a room is through the door. You might have a wonderful soundproof setup but the sound will still go right past the door if you had a large crack beneath the door or if you can see light coming from the other side of the door!
You can purchase adhesive (or nail in) strips that attach to the bottom of doors and sweep over the floor for practically little money, thereby stopping most sounds from escaping that way. A simple and inexpensive soundproofing solution that can make a big impact!
6. Use Acoustic Panels for Sound Absorption
Before sound could rebound off walls and ceilings, acoustic panels absorb sound. They’re designed to increase the sound quality of a space, such as a home theater, but they may also aid with sound transmission across walls.
Panels are available in a range of sizes and thicknesses and are made of porous expanded polypropylene (PEPP). The majority of kinds for household use are covered in textiles in a variety of colors. Custom-printed textiles are available from some suppliers, transforming your sound-absorbing panel into a work of art: They’ll replicate a digital photo on your panel if you send it in.
Panels are attached using clips or Velcro, and installation is a simple do-it-yourself project. A typical 2-by-2-foot panel costs between $25 and $30.
Video: Beautiful, Scientifically proven “DIY” Bass Traps and Acoustic Panels from Ready Acoustics
7. Fill Up Wall Space
The issue with space isn’t often that it gathers up noise from other places, but that it echoes sounds back to itself. The lack of objects taking up space in a big or sparsely furnished room can cause sounds to bounce throughout the room, magnifying even little noises and making everything loud. This problem is easily solved by filling the area with items that absorb echoed sound better.
Adding furniture, bookshelves, and wall art to space can help to lessen the echo’s nature, especially if the pieces are placed near or on the walls. This will not prevent outside noise from entering the room, but it will reduce reverberations within the area.
Advice on How to Improve Soundproofing
As you’ll see, soundproofing a wall takes time, and there are so many alternatives and ideas to choose from that it’s difficult to know where to start. For a tiny space with small walls, the ideal starting point is to purchase some acoustic foam panels and a couple of bass traps, hang them up and observe what difference they make.
For the vast majority of individuals, this would be sufficient soundproofing for their requirements. Other options, including insulating the walls, drywall modification, and rubber paint, should only be considered when space must be completely soundproof.
In Conclusion
Soundproofing a wall for effective noise reduction is quite popular, and it is much easier to accomplish than you would imagine. There are several soundproofing solutions available, but if you take the time to break down the issue into noise kind and noise levels, you can determine if you need to add mass or utilize sound absorption technology to handle impact/vibration, or both.
You will no longer have to suffer from unwanted sounds from noisy neighbors after you have chosen the proper sound insulation for your walls. Providing a great night’s sleep with no concerns or stress from noisy neighbors or other unpleasant noise.
