TURNING DOWN THE NOISE
QI love the look of wood flooring, but it’s so noisy underfoot, especially in upstairs rooms. Is there a way to make it quieter?
AWood floors are lovely, but you’re right to consider the amount of noise they generate. Sound not only travels through a floor, but also bounces around and reverberates off other hard surfaces in a room.
All flooring will need to have underlay, so if you’re fitting wood flooring from scratch, this is a great opportunity to invest in a soundproof option. The most common type to fit under a wood floor is made from foam, but if you pick a noise-reducing style instead, it will minimise the effect of sound travelling through the floor. This underlay is more expensive, but well worth the investment, unless space constrains the height of the floor. The underlay ranges from 2-5mm in depth, increasing in effectiveness with thickness.
If you already have hard floors and are struggling with noise, there are a few things you can do to dampen the impact. Soft furnishings like rugs and wall textiles will absorb some of the noise and stop reverberations, and thick rugs with rubber slipmats underneath will work best to reduce the volume of foot traffic. Sound-blocking curtains also provide an inexpensive solution to noise reduction – Moondream has a great range to choose from.
If the problem is coming from a floor above, you can double-skin the ceiling. This involves laying two sheets of plasterboard on the ceiling, although you’ll also have to redecorate and possibly adjust the lighting and other ceiling fixtures.
Wall panels made of soundproof foam can also be fitted (don’t worry, your home won’t look like a recording studio), or you could look into soundproof doors. These aren’t cheap, but they’re very effective in stopping noise from travelling between two rooms, although they won’t necessarily help with noise between floors.