It would be nice to have curtains that absorb street noise.
Some custom curtain tailors offer a fabric that claims to be soundproof. It’s a little pricey. Not absurdly pricey, but it’s also a bit hard to be confident that such thin fabrics can absorb much sound (they claim 20%).
I would prefer to try hacks. I’ve heard that thick furniture moving pads absorb sound well. I’ve also heard that fiberous fabrics can be effective. For the moment, I probably want to pass on edgy ideas like egg cartons. Maybe later on those. What fabrics are decent for reducing sound? Specifically, I’m wondering about carpets or painter’s drop cloths. Not the simple white canvas drop cloths, but the thicker drop cloths may out of recycled fabrics.
Sounds hates mass, so the easiest and cheapest option would be heavy curtains, the heavier the better.
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My house already had some sort of “let light in but people can’t see in” type curtains when I moved in which I immediately added two layers of the thickest, fattest blackout curtains to. The temperature during the summer immediately dropped a huge amount (plus I can watch tv when the sun is out, my actual reason for it) and I can’t hear street noises besides those dipshit kids with the loud cars (or their smalldick dads with the Harley and/or lifted truck- all of which are explicitly illegal (noise ordinances) and yet……) and maybe if someone is guffawing directly in front of my house, which basically never happens. Pretty nice. Didn’t cost much with either. I also out similar curtains up in my bedrooms for climate control and noise. I might need to add another layer to those though!
I would think two thinner curtains would be more effective than the same width thick curtain, since the decoupling would hinder the sound transfer? Obviously that said, two thick curtains would be best.
There’s a few things at play with noise, and unfortunately there’s no easy answer to your issue.
Easiest and best bang-for-buck: seal your windows up tight. If there’s little gaps for vents, the window doesn’t close tight, or things like that, they will leak noise.
Most effective: replace windows with solid frames or insulation packed extrusions, double glazing using laminated glass, and make the inside pane a soundstop type of glass. Make sure any opening windows have seals.
The curtains probably help with some very high pitched sounds, and there may also be a placebo effect at play, but they’re going to do bugger all I’m afraid. Noise is just vibrating mass, and it’s harder to transmit vibrations through dense mass. So yes, a curtain is better than nothing, but relative to your glass and walls it’s closer to air.
If noise is an issue for sleeping, the very best thing to do before shelling out loads of money on snake oil curtains is to try a few different ear plugs.
A word of advice: if your household has a gravity-centered airflow, please do NOT block all small gaps, else you might develop nasty air quality-related problems later on
gravity-centered airflow
What do you mean by this? I’ve never heard that term before
I was paraphrasing from my mother tongue, so idk if the term is 100% accurate. But in a nutshell, many older houses (at least where I come from, in Europe) don’t have machines that take care of the airflow/changing fresh air, but rather have systems designed around the natural airflow based on gravity. In these kind of homes, making DIY adjustments might break this gravitational airflow, causing mold issues and bad air quality in general.
I don’t know if this is a thing in 'murica but I thought my small addition might save someone a house, hence I decided to include it in the conversation :)
I got these “snake oil” curtains and, living next to a busy road, the room that has them is noticably quieter than theonre without them.
I spent many years trying to sound insulate band and recording rooms on the cheap. I’m not an engineer but from my experience you need mass to stop street noise, which has a lot of low frequency power. No amount of foam or fluffy fabric will make a noticeable difference. Save your money on the ‘soundproof’ fabrics, they’re no better than furniture pads, which can help a little but just aren’t dense enough to stop much bass. Best I’ve found for windows is particle board with chunks of tire rubber nailed on. But you probably don’t want to board up your windows so that’s probably not a good solution for you
I always wanted to find a heavy sheet of rubber to see if that worked but never found anything affordable I could repurpose. Also wonder if heavy muslin dipped in some kind of rubber material might do anything, but never tried that either. Maybe something like those flaps they use in commercial coolers, those are pretty dense, but a sheet. Sorry no specific recommendations for your case but keep a look out for any dense material you could fashion into a curtain or window cover.
But also just check around your windows if it they need any sealing. A tiny opening can transmit a lot more sound than you think.
Right, no “soundproof” curtain will absorb low frequency noise (which street noise unfortunately to a large extend consists of), regardless what ads are trying to sell you. Heavy curtains can absorb high and mid range frequencies quite well and professional acoustic curtains made of heavy (≥500 g/m²) Molton or Calmuc are the best you could get (the cloth costs about 10-15 €/m²), but if honest producers will tell you they won’t help against low frequency noise. Anyway, if your windows aren’t too large you could try that for a few bucks…
The best bet are new insulated vacuum triple glass windows that aren’t cheap at all.
blackout curtains aren’t half bad at this tbh
Is the idea to have the window open while reducing noise? Otherwise, wouldn’t it make more sense to replace the window glass?
If that is the case, there are also fresh air thingies that are mounted on the wall and have a tube outside but block any sound from outside. Useful when having a bedroom next to a busy road.
Any idea what search terms I can use to find these? Any anchor to kick off my search would be great, image, product page, whatever. I did some searches based on what you wrote and cant find it.
Try searching for “sound absorbing window vents” or “accoustic trickle vents” or “silent air vent”.
I think they all use something that is called an air maze. The air (and sound) will travel through series of bends covered with foam so the sound will be blocked but not the air. This does make the airflow slow down so it needs a fan the make it go through.
Thanks!
IKEA actually has some but I sort of doubt how much they actually block:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/gunnlaug-sound-absorbing-curtain-white-60500170/
Sound absorbing materials with some space between them will work best, so if you go with curtains you’ll want to get the double curtain rod to put in two sets. The space between the material helps reduce the transfer of sound energy.
White noise machines do wonders for killing external noise, but then that’s all you hear. Similar to running a loud fan, I can’t hear anything when my fan is running.
@CCatMan I appreciate the advice. So this kind of answers one of my questions. I wondered if I take a painter’s drop cloth in matching dimensions to the curtain and attach it, would that be much different than if I double the size of the drop cloth and attach it with deliberate folds (like pleated pants). What you said somewhat implies that It would help to use double the size of drop cloth and force some deliberate folds which would create an air gap with the curtain.
I have a home studio and made professional grade accoustic panels for a fraction of the price.I cut a 2in thick MDF frame and filled the inside with 2in thick foam from Amazon, and thick cloth from my local supplier.
They work wonders and I I estimate the price at around $250 each
I like to know to. Definitely need something that can block out majority if not all the street sounds.
@Fredselfish This article gives some useful info:
https://www.bobvila.com/articles/best-soundproof-curtains/
I’m most interested in a cheap option so the paragraph on “Industrial Blankets” caught my attention. But it didn’t give much detail or mention how carpet fairs in comparison.
As an experiment, I took mattress someone threw out and pulled the memory foam-like pad out, and stuffed that into my window, then hung a cheap normal blackout curtain with a drop cloth safety pinned onto that, then i have a thermal curtain hanging on a 2nd support track. It seems to work well although I’ve not tried it on a noisey night. Weekend is coming so maybe I’ll have a better idea next week.
What’s it look like? I mean from the outside. Don’t want it to look trashy
Sound insulation and sound absorbtion are two very different things.
Egg cartons are a myth. They do nothing for sound and only create a fire hazard.
Professionel recording rooms might have egg carton shaped foam to absorb sound instead of reflecting it. It has nothing to do with sound insulation. It does not stop the sound. It only stops the sound from reflecting, so that he microphone gets a clear signal without reverb. You can still hear the sound everywhere inside and outside the recording room.
To insulate your ears from sound, you use ear plugs.
Similarly, to insulate your apartment from sound, you basically need earplugs for your windows.
Certainly not the cheapest option but there are special windows for soundproofing.
https://www.houselogic.com/remodel/windows-doors-and-floors/soundproof-windows/
I can’t believe hat curtains can help much with soundproofing.
My Lectrofan noise machine works wonders for covering up all kinds of noise
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Where’s Dr. Nachtigaller when you need him…
I live next to a bridge with heavy traffic, a river, and train tracks on either side of said river. Thankfully the train only comes by once or twice a day on our side, but constantly over on the other one.
I got used to the noise relatively quickly after moving in, like maybe a month or two. I’m used to city noise though.
That being said, my eventual plan is to get some heavy wooden window shutters. I figure I can close them up in the colder months, and it should block some noise out. I do keep the windows open in the summer though, no A/C here.
