Do high ceilings and hardwood floors in your home make you feel like you’re living in an echo chamber?
Echoes and travelling sounds don’t make for a relaxing space.
Fortunately, there are ways to reduce noise in your home without undergoing any construction.
Let’s look at what causes echoes and how you can combat them with 4 simple tips:
How Does Sound Travel Through Your Home?
Echoes are sound waves that bounce off of the surfaces in a room. When there’s nothing to absorb these travelling sound waves, they produce echoes.
Hard, smooth surfaces like wood floors, walls, and glass have nowhere for the sound to go, so sound waves are reflected rather than absorbed.
High ceilings are also culprits for echoing because sounds travel further to reach their destination, thus creating more reverberations.
The best way to cut down on echoes is by adding softer materials to a room – giving the sound somewhere to go.
Area rugs, upholstered furniture, canvas wall hangings and similar items will help decrease echoes in a room.
If the sound waves have somewhere to land, they can’t travel throughout your house.
Adding softer materials is the most straightforward way to reduce echoes but other solutions, like hanging soundproof curtains and installing wall panels, can also lower the noise level.
1. Add Furnishings
The more furniture you put in a room, the less echo there will be. Instead of moving freely about the space, sound waves are stopped by sofas, chairs, ottomans, or coffee tables.
Furnishings work even better to reduce echo when they’re upholstered in the right fabrics, too. A slick, leather sofa won’t catch as much sound as a fabric made from polyester or nylon.
If you’re shopping specifically for noise-reducing furniture, then keep the fabric type in mind.
Putting up artwork like canvas prints on the walls can also decrease echoes. Sound waves that would normally bounce off the wall are caught by the canvas instead.
Adding pillows and blankets to your furniture also helps with travelling sound.
Relying on furniture and décor is one of the simplest ways to prevent echoes in your home. Not to mention, it gives you a chance to add some style to your interiors!
2. Hang Noise-Reducing Curtains
If you don’t want to buy more furniture, another way to keep noise to a minimum is with soundproof curtains. Regular curtains can help combat echoes, but soundproofing curtains go one step further.
They’re created with dense, soundproofing fabrics that help deaden noise. They also come in a variety of colours and styles to easily fit with your existing design aesthetic.
When selecting noise reduction curtains, ensure the fabric has been tested for soundproofing and choose a material that’s likely to absorb more sound.
To make the most of soundproof curtains, you should hang them from floor to ceiling, instead of from the top of the window.
Consider also doubling the number of panels you need, to provide more density.
With dense, full-length, noise reduction curtains, you can diminish echoes travelling in your house or flat.
3. Install Wall Panels
If you need something more effective than furniture or soundproof curtains, then you might consider fabric or foam wall panels.
These types of panels are used in commercial spaces like theaters and recording studios to reduce noise and enhance acoustics.
For those with home theaters or who need soundproof space to play music, wall panels are a practical and inexpensive choice.
Fabric wall panels are constructed from soundproofing materials and then covered with fabric. Take care to choose panels with fabrics that actually absorb sound.
Foam panels come in different thicknesses and can help seal in more sound than fabric panels. Foam is less visually appealing than fabric, however.
4. Acoustic Wood Wall Panels
For the best noise reduction solution – cost-effective, aesthetically pleasing, and echo diminishing – consider acoustic wood wall panels.
These panels combine the best features of wood wall cladding and sound-deadening wall panels. They reduce noise like fabric or foam panels, but they’re much more attractive.
Panels like these make a great feature wall in any bathroom, kitchen, or living room.
With a wood slat design, this type of acoustic panel isn’t only suited for TV rooms or rooms with recording equipment. Acoustic wood wall panels can go in kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms, offices, or any interior space.
They’re also easy to install. There are two methods: for a better soundproofing quality, you should use batons.
For more decorative purposes, you can simply screw the felt backing into the wall directly.
Timber wall panels with acoustic properties are an ideal, design-minded solution for echo reduction in your home.
Final Thoughts on Reducing Echo
Echoes and noise pollution can make your home feel less comfortable.
With simple solutions like adding furnishings, hanging soundproof curtains, or installing acoustic wall panels, you can reduce the sounds that travel through your home.
And if you want both a stylish and cost-effective soundproofing system, acoustic wood slat wall panels are your best choice.
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