Additional guidance about soundproofing your home

Firstly, you have to identify how the sound is travelling into your home. It may be coming directly through the separating wall, the floor, the ceiling, the windows or it may be coming along another indirect route (called a flanking path). Outside, it may be coming directly from the noise source, or the noise might be reflected into your property by a structure.

Airborne (for example speech and music) and structure borne sound (for example impact noise arising from footsteps directly on the floor above) are often associated both with direct transmission through a floor and flanking transmission via supporting walls and other associated structures. To identify the most effective remedial treatment, you need to establish if the problem is due to direct transmission, flanking transmission or a combination of both.

Sound travelling along direct and flanking paths makes the structure vibrate and causes noise to radiate into your room. A traditional solution is to build another wall or ceiling beside the original, but not connected to it.

In the case of noise transmission vertically through a floor/ceiling, remedial treatment can be applied to the ceiling below, the floor above or a combination of both.

In the case of noise transmission horizontally through walls, remedial treatment can be applied to either side of the wall, or on both sides.