How To Reduce Indoor and Outdoor Noise At Home

Just like our minds control the thoughts we nurture so is our brain equipped with the capacity to filter noise and many times it filters background noise that reaches it without us even noticing. This article reveals ways we can reduce ambient noise within our homes.

It is common knowledge that exposure to very loud noise can be damaging to fragile parts of the ear, or is that an information only known to few? Anyways, in case you’ve never been told then if you are reading this right now you should be glad you did; chronic exposure to sounds even if it’s not that very loud noise can reduce your capacity to hear.

Unfortunately, so many of us may lose our ability to hear thanks to the noise we blindly subject ourselves to daily. Now I’m not talking about people who listen to music via their headphones every now and then.

We’ve seen many cases of permanent hearing loss due to the everyday noise that we take for granted as a fact of life. Truth be told there is a lot of external noise that gets to us in our various homes and worse still we are not aware of the dangers inherent.

When it comes to the issue of reducing the noise we are subjected to daily then the home is a good start point. A lot of us spend a great deal of time at home asides the Lagosians who spend more than half of their life in traffic. The background noise that gets to us daily emanates more from our homes

Reducing The Noise

The source of the noise we are exposed to at homes can come from a noisy, loud or quarrelsome neighbour or the endless cacophony of sounds from a bustling street. God help you if you live close to a major highway, then doomsday is not faraway anymore. Those who live in industrialized areas can also have their own fair share of the ill-luck that comes from noise.

Albeit, whether the offender in a noisy apartment is a loud neighbour, or the endless symphony of the bustling street, the first step to reduce the decibels is to block the noise coming in from outside.

However how do you achieve this?

Check out the various ways you can reduce noise at home below;

Cover Floors with Rugs
Yeah! We have various apartments with floors made of tiles. Some people believe that laying rug on an already tiled floor is doing too much. That can’t be true because some persons just like that feel rugs give them when they step on the floor of their house,while others can’t even lie on a floor that has no rug on it.

Asides the aforementioned, the best way to reduce noise levels in an apartment especially a hardwood one is to cover the floor with carpet tiles. This particularly is done to forestall noise from your house getting to the neighbours. While a thick rug floor dampen noise coming in from downstairs. Invariably, you can do so much with very little.

Cover Thin Windows with Heavy Drapes
I guess you never knew this. Good curtains work wonders against street noise coming through flimsy window. Thicken the material between the room and the noise, with lined curtains, window dressing made from bulky fabric like velvet, or specialty noise-absorbing drapes (which usually have a thick wool core stitched between the decorative fabric).

Line Shared or Outside Walls with Furniture
A wood bookcase against a wall shared with a noisy neighbor can help absorb some of the sound coming through the walls. That goes double if the bookshelf or cabinet is home to lots of books, clothes, towels or linens; each are natural insulators against sound

Reducing Your  Noise

In all honesty, not all of the background noise running through an apartment is the result of things intruding from the external composition of the house. Loud appliances with tumbling drums or whirring fans are all adding to the ambient noise level bombarding our ears at home every day. And the louder these background appliances run, the louder you’ll turn up the TV or speakers to drown them out. .

Soundproof the Laundry Room
Do you know that the two loudest appliances in a home are actually the laundry machine and generating sets? While generators are mostly not in the house, its close proximity to the apartments in most cases makes it a noise contributor. Though there are some homes that have dedicated spaces for generators, many homes still have to deal with the noise within their space. However, these days generating sets may just have gotten less noisy or totally noise free with new technologies.

Those lucky to have a dedicated laundry room can take steps to soundproof the walls with foam insulation, like what’s used in music studios to reduce the noise that gets to them.

Small Apartments, Noisy Gadgets
Those who live in small home spaces yet possess home theatres are in for a horrid time. Every appliance in a space where you literally cook, sleep, work and relax adds to the overall noise just a little bit, so the more you keep your gear powered off, the better. For instance, before sitting down to watch a movie, turn off the computer, cable box or gaming console (with their noisy fans) so you can keep the volume down on the cinema sound bar. And of course, be certain you don’t have a noisy generator because with the presence of that there is really so little you can do.

Move Devices Away into a Soundproof Area
As for the other devices that whir and buzz around the clock, see what can be moved out from common living areas to bring down the noise level. If a loud background device from the living room can be found a new home in a soundproof locker or another room (maybe the newly-soundproofed laundry room?), it will reduce the noise level in the whole apartment for good, saving your ears in the process.