How to Soundproof a Bedroom

DIY Soundproofing Applications

To understand why soundproofing is necessary in providing an acoustic solution, you first have to have an understanding of how sound behave within an internal and external environment. Sound waves travel through a medium such as air, liquid or solid objects.

Some medium offers little or no resistant such as air and the sound wave travel with minute reduction the further away it travels from the source. If the sound waves come into contact with a solid object, some of the sound waves will pass through the object (if it is not dense enough) with some reduction and some will reflect back off the object. If the sound waves on the other hand come into contact with a solid object with enough density or density couple with engineer air pockets, the sound waves will dissipate to a tolerant level or prevented from travelling through the object.

Other noise pollution sources are produce from vibrations, vibration occurs when sound waves travels back and forth between two or more objects. Some common vibration sources are machinery, pumps (shower pumps, central heating pumps) and sound waves bouncing off walls in an enclose space.

I must point out that to achieve total reduction of sound can be very expensive and will only be recommended for specialist solution such as recording studio or where noise sensitivity is a particular issue. In majority of cases a soundproofing solution will only require you to meet the WHO (World Health Organization) Standard which has a range of 30 - 55 dB (for most applications).

Everyone would like to have a better quality of life within their homes that offer peace and quite.  If you live in the city, close to a busy road or pedestrian area, you will experience a wide range of noise pollution throughout the night.

You would expect that if you live in an urban or village environment noise nuisance won’t posses as much of a problem. But your nightly sleep can be disturbed by inconsiderate noisy neighbours, who don’t care one way or the other if they ruin your sleep. These noise nuisance can be mildly irritating to extremely irritating.

Some of most common noise nuisance you will experience if you live in such an area or next to nuisance neighbours are; car sirens, dogs barking, traffic flow noise, vehicle horns, loud music from bars or night clubs, radio, alarms going off, stereo playing banging music, loud speech, people shouting, people arguing, baby crying, television sounds, home cinema, kids running up and down the stairs, heavy foot step on wooden or laminate floors, machinery noise, bathroom noises, washing machine spinning, utility pumps and so on…

Which ever noise source is affecting your sleep, will need to be address either by talking to the people responsible or installing adequate sound insulation. What you will require is a sound insulation solution that will reduce the noise problem to an acceptable level. Total noise eradication will be a more expensive solution and only recommended if you don’t have budget consideration. 

Soundproofing solutions are very effective at restoring peace and quietness to your bedroom. Most ceilings, floors and walls can be insulated against noise problems to prevent airborne noise and impact noise transmission into your bedroom.

See below for full detail and diagram on how to go about soundproofing you bedroom.

To go about soundproofing your ceiling will require you to take one of two approaches or a combination of both. First if you have access to the room above; this will enable you to apply a solution to the floor above, the floor cavity and the ceiling. For this solution we would recommend our NSSF7 Underlay, Dense Fibre Matting, SoundBreaker Bar and NSSC1+ Ceiling Board.

If you do not have access to the floor above; you can apply the solution directly to your ceiling. Depending on the height of your ceiling and budget, you can use any of our three Ceiling Systems Options in this application.

Soundproofing your walls is a lot easier because you do not need access to your next door neighbours property. Again base on your budget and total room space you can use anyone of our Wall System Options or our Direct to Wall System to meet Building Regulation 2003 Part E Standard. Our Direct to Wall System is a stand alone product and is use in application where building regulation requirement has to be met.

We have a wide range of floor soundproofing solutions to meet any application. We have products that are for specific applications such as concrete floors, timber floors, metal floors and under screed. We have underlay products such as NSSF7 Plus Underlay, Noise Stop Isolation Mat excellent in impact noise reduction; NoiseDeck 36, NoiseStop Isolation Tape and Dense Fibre Matting excellent for timber floor, use to meet Building Regulation 2003 Part E Standard; Monarfloor Impact 18 excellent for reduce sound transmission through concrete floors.

We also offer custom build solutions to meet specific applications. We can help with ceiling soundproofing, floor soundproofing and wall soundproofing. If you need any advice or help, one of our consultants will be happy to help you. Call: 08451 306 269