What is Soundproofing and How Does It Work?

More often than not, there’s two reasons why someone will want soundproofing. The first is to block noise from entering a room and the second is to block noise from leaving a room. Normally sound cannot be 100% blocked however, it is possible to significantly reduce the noise.

Absorbing Sound

One way of soundproofing a room is to absorb the sound that is in that room. A popular material used for doing this is dense foam. Foam and various other soft materials absorb the sound because the sound travels directly into the soft surface of the material and as a result it gets reduced.

There’s a number of different ways that you can soundproof your room to absorb the sound. The foam and various other materials can be placed on the outside of a wall or inside of a wall. Either way, both will go some way to helping you soundproof your room.

Reducing Sound

Alternatively, if you can’t soundproof your room to absorb the sound you can reduce the sound. Something as simple as a thick wall can be used to reduce sound. Permanent or temporary walls, foam, room dividers and even curtains are amongst the materials used to reduce sound.

More often than not though, soundproofing materials for reducing sound are often made out of wood and fibreglass but this doesn’t mean that these are the only materials you can use.

To further increase the sound reduction, forming an air tight barrier around the walls or curtains increases sound reduction by stopping the air from travelling through the air holes that are there.

Another common way of blocking sound is to build two walls or doors with an air space between them. The doubling up of the doors or walls provide extra material to help block sound. The air space in between the two creates a kind of bubble that helps to block the sound.

See our Wall soundproofing products and solutions here.

Parts of a Room to Soundproof

You may be considering getting soundproofing but you may not know where to soundproof in the room that you want soundproofing. Or, more precisely where you should put the soundproofing.

As we’ve already established, sound can travel through any gaps and it can also travel through doors, windows, the floor, thin walls and even the roof. Before you place the product though, it’s probably a wise idea to have a walk around the room and listen out for where you may be able to hear any noise getting in or out of the room.

Take a look at other posts in our blog to find out how to soundproof against noisy neighbours, soundproof between floors and other hints and tips to help you improve your acoustic harmony.