If you are looking to take your music practice to the next level, consider soundproofing a room in your home as a practice room. Some quality soundproofing allows you to turn the volume up to 11 without disturbing the rest of your family, your neighbor next door, or your neighbor half a mile down the road…
A music practice room with acoustical treatment also improves the sound quality inside the space so that it will sound good when playing and be a bit quieter as well. Let’s dive into the different options for soundproofing a home music practice room, depending on your budget and how loud the instrument is you need to soundproof for. We’re looking at you drummers!
Soundproofing vs. Acoustics
Before getting into how to soundproof your home music practice room, we first need to go over the difference between soundproofing and acoustics. They’re easy to confuse!
Soundproofing: Blocking Sound: Soundproofing involves reducing the amount of sound coming into and going out of a space. This usually involves adding density to the walls, sealing gaps and penetrations, and decoupling surfaces. If your goal in making a music practice room is to prevent sound from leaving the room, you should be looking for soundproofing materials and treatments.
Acoustics: Absorbing Sound: Acoustical materials absorb sound. Acoustics are typically used in large spaces or in spaces where the quality of the sound needs to be improved. They also can help modestly reduce the amount of noise within a space by reducing the amount of reflected sound. A home practice room hugely benefits from acoustical treatment! If you want to improve the sound quality of a room and reduce the amount of reverb and echo, you should be looking into acoustical materials to absorb sound inside the room.
Soundproofing a Home Practice Room for Music
When soundproofing a home music practice room, you have two main options: 1) build a new room with soundproof walls, doors, windows, and flooring, or 2) treat your existing room with soundproofing materials. There’s a company based in Charlotte you should check out for help or materials – Second Skin Audio. They carry a bunch of specialty soundproofing materials that you can’t find at Home Depot.
Soundproofing a Home Music Practice Room Without Construction: While rebuilding a new room with soundproofing in mind is the most effective way, it is not always necessary (and may not be feasible!). If you are just looking for a bit of noise reduction and sound absorption, you can reduce sound coming in and out of your home practice room without extensive construction. The best thing you can do is select a room in your house that’s further away from the action, so the noise has to go further to disturb anyone. Also, because windows are a weak point from sound, you’ll want to select a room that doesn’t have a window facing someone who’s easily disturbed. If Steve next door is a grump, you should consider that!
Soundproof the Door: The door is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to sound passing in and out of a room. The gaps around the door allow airborne noise to easily pass. The first thing you want to do is make sure you have a solid core door. Hollow core doors are not dense enough to block sound and will NOT be effective at all in a soundproofing scenario. The next thing we recommend you do is to install a seal kit around the door – both sides, the top, and the bottom. This will block noise from coming through the gaps and significantly reduce the amount of sound leaving the room.
Soundproof the Walls, Ceiling, and Floor: The next area to soundproof in your home music practice room is the walls and ceiling. Your first step should be to use acoustical sealant to seal any gaps, cracks, and seams, such as behind baseboards and electrical outlets. This ensures the wall is airtight and prevents sound from leaking through.
For instruments that rely on impact noise (like drums), you’ll need a rubber isolation mat and extra soundproofing for the walls! Our friends at Second Skin recommended Green Glue and a second layer of 5/8” drywall for anyone who doesn’t want to remove the existing wall and ceiling. Also, no canned lights! They’re big holes for sound to exit through.
Hanging Soundproof Blankets: Soundproof blankets are a good temporary soundproofing solution. They are an effective way to add density to your walls without renovating. The key is that you’ll need to get blankets that have some actual weight to them – they can’t just be moving blankets. You can simply hang the soundproof blankets on hooks on your wall and easily remove them whenever you want.
Soundproofing a Home Music Practice Room With Construction
This is the best option for soundproofing your home practice room if you want the best possible results and have the space to do it. You’ll either want to renovate a room or add a new room (could even be detached from the rest of the house!).
Walls and Ceiling: The best option for soundproofing walls and ceilings in new construction is with sound isolation clips, 5/8” drywall, and acoustical sealant. If someone is going to be practicing drums, you should consider upgrading with second layer of drywall and Green Glue. Seal around the perimeter once again with acoustical sealant. Do this to all the walls and the ceiling.
Floor: Any room you would to play loud music in needs to have the floor soundproofed. If the instrument you play has a lot of low frequency sound (such as drums and bass), the sound will vibrate through the floor into other rooms in the house. This can also happen if your speaker is placed directly on the floor. The best soundproofing treatment for this is a rubber floor underlayment. Installing rubber underneath the flooring and will absorb impact noise from your drums, bass, or guitar, preventing the sounds from being carried through the floor to other rooms in your house.
Acoustic Treatments for a Home Music Practice Room
Acoustics are another important aspect of a home practice room. The better a room is soundproofed, the more you need acoustical materials to control the noise that’s still inside the room. You also want your music to sound good, and acoustic panels will improve the sound quality of your room by reducing echo and reverb.
Wall Acoustic Panels: Acoustic wall panels are the most common way to add acoustical materials to a room. There are several different types of acoustic wall panels that can be used in your home practice room, and the type you use really boils down to how good you want the room to look and how much sound absorption you need.
If you aren’t too worried about the aesthetics of the room, you can use budget friendly acoustic panels that still perform well. Our favorite budget panels are also sold by Second Skin Audio, and are made of recycled, no-itch materials. They’ve got several great options if you want to build DIY panels as well!
For higher budgets or ones where the aesthetic is really important, we recommend using fabric wrapped panels which come in a huge variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.
How Many Acoustic Panels Do You Need? For the best results, you should shoot for 32 sq ft of acoustic panels in a 10’ x 10’ room with a normal ceiling height (8 feet). For precise calculations, you’ll need to contact an acoustics professional. For a practice room, you can evenly space the panels around the room – although if you have a particularly loud instrument like a drum set, you should focus the panels around where it’ll be located.
There you go! We hope you enjoy your totally awesome home practice room for music!
