If you’re frustrated with your apartment because it’s on a busy, loud street or you have noisy neighbors, it’s time to soundproof your apartment. There are many different ways to reduce noise, and although you might think it’s expensive to soundproof your living space, you can affordably soundproof your apartment in all kinds of creative ways. Below, discover eight ways to soundproof your apartment.
1. Cover your bare wall space
Your apartment may be noisy due to sound reflecting on and off your walls. One solution is to add some padding to your apartment’s walls. If you want to reduce the number of hard surfaces off which sound can reflect, you can simply hang curtains or add foam for further sound absorption.
2. Move furniture around
Simply rearranging your furniture can change the way sound reflects in your apartment, and doing so allows you to soften sounds without spending money. Moving large furniture near walls and hanging soft wall art such as a large, thick tapestry can also add some sound absorption.
3. Add rugs
Adding a rug can quiet your apartment if noise is entering your space from below your floor. Just one large rug can often muffle these sounds as they travel into your apartment. However, just one rug won’t drown out the sound of a loud neighbor.
Layering multiple rugs is a growing aesthetic trend that can also greatly help in reducing outside noise. It’s best to use varying rug textures since texture irregularity will cause more sound wave absorption.
4. Get soundproof curtains
You can get blackout curtains, insulated curtains that reduce sunlight and sound. You might think that blackout curtains are black based on their name, but you can actually get them in many light colors. Although blackout curtains are primarily used to block light, they’re also a good way to reduce noise since they’re made of thick materials.
5. Seal around windows
Outside sounds can seep through the cracks around your apartment’s windows. To solve this problem, you can seal around your windows with an acoustic seal kit. If you need help with installation or you’re not sure if you can seal cracks around your windows, you can ask your landlord about weatherstripping them instead.
6. Add draft blockers under doors
You can use door draft stoppers to reduce noises from traveling into your different rooms in your apartment. Door draft stoppers seal air gaps around doors and make it harder for noise to travel through them. Although a crack may seem minuscule, adding a door draft stopper can make a substantial difference.
7. Add bookshelves
Place a bookshelf or multiple bookshelves against your walls that need noise reduction. A perfect area to place a bookshelf is against a common wall that is shared with your bedroom’s wall and the living room of your neighbor’s apartment. A wooden bookcase can especially strongly absorb sound coming through the walls, especially if you have many books on it.
8. White noise machines
If you like white noise, you can play some to drown out loud noises. White noise can come from an air conditioner, fan, air purifier, music, or recorded nature sounds – any machine or background noise that is unignorable but not grating is white noise. You can also play white noise on the speakers in your apartment’s sound system to reduce outside noise.
How do you soundproof your apartment? Sound off in the comments!
