Living in a condo, an apartment, or even a townhouse can have its pros and cons. These homes can be convenient and low maintenance. You also save on heating and cooling bills by sharing walls, and that’s a big deal these days.
But sharing walls can also cause problems related to privacy…
You can often hear your neighbors through the walls, or else they can hear you, and that’s not good. So, if you find yourself in this kind of situation, you want to know how to soundproof shared walls or common condo walls.
Well, you’re in luck because there are a lot of ways to soundproof walls, reduce overall noise, and get the peace and quiet you need. Or, if it’s you making the noise, you can soundproof your walls and then go all out, knowing you won’t be annoying your neighbors.
Why Soundproof Common Walls?
There are two simple answers to this simple question. Either you’re loud, and you don’t want to bother others, or else they’re loud, and you don’t want to be bothered.
If you have noisy neighbors, you can find it hard to work, sleep, or even hear yourself think. They can be a real disturbance if they play their music loud or play instruments, shout and argue, or party into the wee hours.
Unfortunately, noisy neighbors upstairs and downstairs aren’t the subject of this article. But some of the wall soundproofing ideas I’ll give you here will help them, too.
What if you’re noisy?
If you’re noisy and you know it, try not to clap your hands and stomp your feet too loud, can’t you? Well, no, sometimes you can’t.
You might be a professional musician who needs to practice or a craftsperson who uses loud power tools in your work. You may even just be a loud talker and simply can’t help it. Well, at least you’re thinking of others by looking up ways to soundproof your walls.
If you realize that you have a noise problem and you’re worried about driving others mad, or even getting thrown out of your apartment, then soundproofing your walls may be what you need to do.
How to Soundproof Shared Walls – Main Methods
There are a lot of different ways to soundproof walls – probably a lot more than you realize. Some are intensive and expensive, some are one or the other, and some are pretty cheap and easy. Of course, it all depends on just how much noise you need to reduce.
1 Room-Within-a-Room
Let’s start with the most extreme option and work our way down. If you’re a drummer that, for some reason, has to practice at full volume on a regular acoustic kit (never heard of electronic drums or sound-reducing practice cymbals?), or a professional jackhammer rodeo rider, this is for you.
The most effective way…
To soundproof any activity is to build a soundproof room around the place where you do it. In other words, you can de-couple your practice space from the walls of your actual apartment or condo.
You essentially build a room within a room that has its own floor, ceiling, walls, insulation, and even dampening between its structural components and the original floor and walls.
This is a big job and will no doubt be expensive and a lot of hard work, but I won’t go into detail here. Instead, check out his article on how to build your own soundproof room.
2 Double Walls
The next method you could use to majorly reduce sound transmission between shared walls is to double out those walls. This means adding to the thickness of the walls you currently have or, better, building a whole separate layer of new walls inside of them.
Now, this can be a problem if you’re not the owner and don’t have permission to make these kinds of alterations to the property. But, if you can do it, this is one of the most effective ways to soundproof shared walls.
Regardless of their material…
You can simply drywall over the old walls. If it’s drywall over drywall, you get a double thickness that should reduce sound transmission by half. If it’s a material like wood or brick instead, covering them with drywall makes it harder for sound to travel, so again you’ll get a big reduction here.
Of course, if you’re already going to use a new layer of drywall, most of the time and cost will be in that. Adding the structure (wood or light steel) for a new wall will increase the cost a little, but it will make a huge difference.
If you build a new wall apart from the old one, you’ll get a gap of air that will act as insulation. It’s hard for sound to travel through a solid, then gas, then a solid again – physics, baby!
Even better, though…
Add actual insulation in the gap, like standard pink fiberglass insulation or even closed-cell foam sound-deadening insulation. These insulators can deaden sound considerably and also have the bonus of reducing your heating and cooling bills.
3 Acoustic Wall Panels
Yes, you can staple paper egg cartons to your walls or hang thick shag carpet up. Just make sure it isn’t cat-pee stained first to avoid a disaster like a friend of mine. However cheap they may be, though, these fixes are usually sloppy and ugly.
There are better insulating and better-looking materials out there…
If you’re OK with a recording studio look, you can get your hands on machined acoustic foam panels like these from JBER or thicker pyramid panels from Bee Quiet. They’re inexpensive, running around $1-3/square foot, and can cut down on an incredible amount of noise.
The only downside is that they use adhesives to put them up, which can damage your wall finish if that’s a concern.
Prettier options are available, too…
Although, of course, for more money. You can get smoother, high-quality panels that can blend into any space, like these Rhino acoustic absorption panels.
And now many companies are making wall panels that look like art pieces, like these from Ruonin. You can get big pictures of mountains, lakes, or even abstract pieces which sneakily do double-duty as sound-absorbing panels.
4 Blankets and Curtains
First of all, if you have a space with lots of hard, flat surfaces, you will get more noise echoing around. So, regular blankets, curtains, carpets, and soft furniture will help a lot with noise absorption. But, here I’m talking about special sound-absorbing curtains or blankets that can be hung as curtains.
If you can’t build new walls…
Or, even stick things to the walls for fear of causing damage, these hanging materials might be the option for you. Heavy curtains might help a bit, but really you want to look at sound-proofing blankets or panels that you can hang.
This US Cargo sound control blanket is big and can make a difference to the level of sound in a wall space 96” by 80” in size. It’s not the prettiest solution out there, but it’s affordable and won’t damage your walls. You’ll need anchors or a curtain rod to hang it, though.
Putting thick curtains over windows and doors can also help block out incoming noise. Glass is especially poor at insulating for sound, so windows could be a big point of entry for outside noise.
5 Rearranging the Furniture
While this might seems like a joke, there is a lot you can do with your home layout that will affect sound levels.
If you’re the one making lots of noise…
Try to move your activities, so they’re not close to the shared walls of your home. If that’s possible, that is! You could swap your home theatre room with a bedroom so that your noise goes towards the hallway instead of the neighbor’s unit, for example.
You can also add sound-dampening materials to your place, like the blankets, curtains, and soft furnishings that I have already mentioned. This will also help if the problem is not you but your noisy neighbors by reducing the reflections of incoming noise.
One other thing that you can do if your neighbors are noisy and won’t change is to change where your activities are. If your bedroom is next to their noisy wall, change to a quieter room or move your bed so your ears will be farther away.
6 Block Up Sound Leaks
If you can’t do much about the walls, or you have, but it’s still noisy, there’s something else to consider. You could have sound leaks, points where it’s easier for sounds to get in or out of your place. These are often around windows, under door gaps, and even through ducts.
Try sealing these up and seeing how that helps to reduce your noise issues. Thick curtains can help over windows.
For door gaps, you can get draft stoppers like this one from Fowong, which also do a great job of blocking out noise from hallways. Even vents can be covered up if they’re too noisy, and the air control is fine without them.
Ideas for How to Soundproof Shared Walls
Well, there you have it, a pile of ideas on how to soundproof common walls and also reduce noise inside your home. They range in price from super-cheap to thousands of dollars. So, you have to consider how much noise you need to reduce and how much you can afford to do.
For me, the best way to soundproof common walls is to build double walls, at least on the noisiest sides of your place. Yes, this will cost money and take some time and work, but the result can be terrific, especially if you use drywall and an insulated gap between the two walls.
Acoustic panels, blankets, and curtains also have their place, so it all depends on cost as well as aesthetics. And, if you can’t use any of these solutions, you can always rearrange your space to avoid unwanted sound transmission.
Until next time, good luck, and let the music play.
