My baby daughter is now 7 months old, and I’m really glad that I made the decision before she was born to soundproof the nursery.
There are two good reasons to soundproof your baby’s room: (1) it provides a quiet place for baby to sleep without forcing everyone else in the house to be totally silent, and (2) it keeps baby’s cries from echoing through the house when the baby needs to cry it out.
Don’t worry about not being able to hear the baby in a soundproofed nursery. That’s what a baby monitor is for!
First, Get a Solid-Core Door
The very best thing you can do to soundproof baby’s nursery is to get a solid core door. Most interior doors in homes are hollow–very hollow. In fact, they do very little to cut out sound.
If you need some proof of this, ask your spouse to stand on one side of the closed door and you on the other. You’ll see that you can easily hold a conversation.
If you are not sure if you have a hollow or solid door, just knock on it. If it’s hard and solid like the front door of your house, it’s a solid door. If it feels like thick cardboard, you have a solid-core door.
Next, Get a Sound Dohm
We bought lots of products for our baby to try and make our lives easier. But without a question, the most indispensable product we bought was the Marpac Sound Dohm (link to Amazon).
It’s a simple noise maker that just makes a fan noise without blowing any air. It’s just a soothing sound that will mask noise made in other rooms in the house from interfering with baby’s rest. This has made life SOO much better for us and our daughter!
Consider SoundProof Curtains
Soundproof curtains are generally something people buy when they want to keep sound from outside the house from coming through the window. Frankly, they aren’t great for that. It takes thick density to actually block sound.
However, by having thick fabrics in a baby’s room, it prevents sound from bouncing off walls. It deadens, but does not block sound. If you’d like to hear what a difference this will make, go yell in your closet. The sound does not bounce hardly at all because of all the soft clothing in the room soaking up the sound. Then go yell in a bathroom and you’ll hear it’s MUCH louder.
Simply buying some soundproof curtains for the baby’s room like these inexpensive but high quality ones on Amazon can make a nice difference in how quiet and peaceful the room is. I wrote a full review of soundproof curtains where you can learn more about that.
Also, hanging up a decorative quilt on the wall can help. Look for any opportunities to include plush furniture or fabrics, plush rugs if you have hard flooring, or material blinds instead of wood. Look for every opportunity to soak up sound and the room will feel much more quiet.
More Extreme Measures
If you are in a home you own and are handy, then there are some additional steps you can take. First of all, you could double-layer the drywall on whatever wall will cause the biggest issue.
For example, if the nursery has a shared wall with a teenager’s room, then you could put drywall over your existing drywall and then paint the wall. This will significantly reduce the sound that goes through the wall.
In our home, we put up an extra solid core door around a corner going into the baby’s room (where there was a second door). Since the door is the area where the most sound gets in, this made a huge difference.
Also, I haven’t done any testing, but one thing that I think contributes to the sound dampening in our baby’s nursery is the cute textured wallpaper we chose (Aff. link to Amazon). It’s quite thick and is spongy, which soaks up just a little more sound (and looks nice). It’s cool because after you put up the drywall, you just paint right over it.
Don’t Worry About Not Being Able to Hear the Baby
I mentioned that the best thing we bought for our baby was the Sound Dohm. That’s totally true, but the second best thing we bought that has made our life easier is a VIDEO baby monitor. We bought this one on Amazon because it had really good reviews and is reasonably priced.
This has been SOO nice! With our older kids, we just had an audio baby monitor, which wasn’t helpful to know if the baby was safe, if they had a blanket pushed up over their face, etc. With the video monitor, we can check on the baby and make sure she is safe without going inside her room, which makes it much quieter during nap time.
You really shouldn’t worry about soundproofing the room and not being able to hear the baby. That’s what the baby monitor is for, and it makes the baby SO much happier during the day when she can get a peaceful sleep without interruption.
Also, you really don’t have to worry about silencing your other kids around the baby’s room because the white noise maker in the baby’s room makes it so she can’t hear out.
I hope you find what you’re looking for to make a peaceful place for your baby to sleep.