We all know that living with unwanted noise can be terribly inconvenient – causing sleepless nights and stress-filled days. So, whether you are the one making the noise or the one being irritated by the noise, soundproofing a bedroom can be the perfect and in many cases, low-cost solution for everyone living in peaceful harmony.
There are several ways to soundproof your room to prevent sound waves from traveling in or out. If you are a visual person and would like to see it being done step by step, you can check out some informative videos on soundproofing at eHow.com.
Some people have the luxury of soundproofing a room before it is even built. If you fall into this category then you will want to work with your contractor about adding in soundproofing materials into the walls, doors and windows. Your contractor can also work on increasing the thickness of your walls. An article in eHow notes that you can have your contractor add a second wall to an existing wall (without the walls touching) letting the sound isolation clips between the walls prevent the noise from traveling outside the room. You can also ask your contractor to add in fiberglass insulation to the interior walls to insulate the sound. Finally, there are also special paints you can use that will also help soundproof a room. If you go to your local home improvement store, the experts there can advise which paints are best for reducing and absorbing the sound waves from traveling out of the room.
Most people, however, are looking to soundproof a room that already exists. Therefore, before you start shopping for insulation materials, take note: The easiest way to soundproof a room is to add window dressing to all your windows and to cover your floors end to end with carpeting. In addition, you can hang blankets or even install corking on your walls to keep in the sound. You might also consider having furniture with soft fabrics versus harder surfaces such as woods.
Here are some additional means to soundproof your existing bedroom:
1. First and foremost, check your bedroom for sound leaks. You can do that by examining all the doors and windows. Once you ascertain where those noise “leaks” are you can begin to plug them up.
2. Window soundproofing can be as easy as installing a piece of sheetrock into the frame of the window.
3. Arthur Knoxson, president of Acoustic Sciences, advises that in order to eliminate air leaks from the doors you can purchase a weather stripping kit from your local home improvement store. These are pretty inexpensive and are comprised of foam strips that you can install all the way around the door. The key is to make sure the foam strips are the right thickness since you must seal the door airtight in order to eliminate sound traveling in or out.
4. To buffer your walls from sound traveling in or out, you can install one or two layers of drywall.
5. You could also remove one or two walls in your bedroom and apply insulation materials such as fiberglass. Your local home improvement store has a variety of insulation products to choose from.
6. Another way to install insulation is to drill holes in your bedroom walls and then buy or rent a machine that will literally blow insulation materials through the holes. A few hours of work to patch and paint the walls to cover the holes is all you will need to complete this project. If you decide to go through this route, no wall demolition is necessary.
<>
