Sound-Proof Your Home

Peace and quiet can be hard to find in a house full of young musicians, stereos and television sets. If you’d like a quiet room of your own, some of these steps could solve your problem.

Relocate television sets and stereos that are mounded directly on or in contact with walls and floors. Your walls and floors are conductors of sound. So put televisions and stereos on stands. Thick curtains, dense carpet and overstuffed furniture are good sound absorbers. Carpets also soften the impact of noises from adjacent rooms.

Replace hollow interior doors with solid ones. Then weather strip the frame as you would an outside door. Fasten a sweep to the bottom of the door. This plugs the biggest noise path to any room and is especially good for bathrooms, workshops and utility rooms.

Two types of suspended ceilings reduce noise. Although both drop into a grid, they handle sound differently. Flexible fiberglass panels deaden and absorb interior noises, but they won’t keep sounds from leaving or entering your room.

For that you need rigid material board panels. They’re best for blocking noises to the room above. But they won’t soften the noise level of the room where they’ve been installed. Either type of panel works better if you insulate or drywall the joist space above the ceiling.

You may want to install sound-deadening wall coverings such as Homasote or cork. Homasote is a fiberboard made from recycled newspapers covered with burlap. Both Homasote and cork do a good job of absorbing sound and are easy to install. And they double as decorating accents.

Or, you can add new drywall. Simply apply another layer of drywall directly over the original wall. It should block a good amount of noise.

To make sound-proofing your home easy, you can rent the equipment you’ll need to install new doors and drywall, including a door lock jig and hinge template with router and a drywall lift, at many equipment rental centers.