How to Soundproof a Door with Household Items
When it comes to noise and its insulation, doors are one of the most vulnerable parts of your room overall.
Firstly, they are thinner than walls, and secondly there is often a lot of space between the walls and floor and the door.
Also, most of the doors are hollow. That means that they are basically acting like resonating box on the guitar.
They even increase the outdoor noise coming to your room.
It can be a really annoying problem, which is actually quite easy to deal with.
Therefore, that’s the area that you need protecting the most when it comes to noise.
Basically, you can easily soundproof the doors with some household items, but It depends on the state of your doors how much effort will it need investing to successfully overcome the problem.
If you are in the rush to prevent the sudden noise coming from your doors, and you have no time to shop for any soundproofing item, then this article might be helpful since it uses all the household items to improvise the soundproofing barriers.
Most of these solutions are not permanent, so you can use them as a temporary solution until you get a better one.
Here are the steps to soundproof your door easily using only household items.
How to Soundproof a Door with Household Items
1. Seal the Cracks and Holes
For this step, you will need to grab a flashlight and a help of the friend or one of your family member.
Since even the small crevices can make a change to your quietness, try to inspect whole doors.
Turn off your light and light-on your flashlight.
Stand at one of the door sides and ask someone to do as well on the other side.
Slowly circle with the flashlight through the whole door (from the frames to the whole surface of the door) until your friend or a family member spots the light.
If he does spot it, that’s the place which needs fixing.
If you have some green glue, or a substance similar to it, you will easily solve the problem.
It will effectively seal the hole and prevent not only loud noise from coming directly through the doors, but thermal leaking as well.
However, if that’s not the case, you can preventively use any kind of tape in several layers.
It will do the job until you find some more permanent solution
2. Improvise Your Own Weatherstrip
Are you familiar with the weatherstrip?
I’m sure you have noticed it already somewhere, on some doors.
However, weatherstrip is a plastic or metal-like material that you use on the bottom of your doors in order to seal the gap between the bottom of the doors and the floor.
It’s a handy thing when it comes to several problems:
For this purpose, if you don’t have some weatherstrip in your household, you can use some improvised weatherstrip.
You can use some batten, whether is wooden, plastic or metal and knock it with the nails.
This will simply do the job. Anyway, try to fit the size to perfectly match your doors width.
That way, you will prevent even more noise and thermal loss.
You do not need to stop over here.
You can even use sweep throughout the whole frame of the door.
So, let’s jump to that next step.
3. Change the old stripping
First, make sure that the old stripping is a problem.
Inspect if they are damaged or incomplete and then, when you figure out in which condition they are, simply repair them, or change entirely.
There are a few possible outcomes.
Either you will need some knife to peel off the adhesive from the old pieces of weatherstrip, or you will simply need to unscrew the nails before pulling them away from the door.
Once you succeed in this, you can make your own, new weatherstrip out of the materials that you possess in your household.
I would recommend some hard wood, if your doors aren’t metal.
That wood can effectively prevent the noise, not only from coming from outside but also going out.
That way, you will be able to freely and loudly play some music or enjoy the silence.
4. Paint the door, preferably with soundproofing paint
As you may know, the more layers the better protection it is.
You can use paint to fight with the noise.
If it happens that you have some soundproofing paint - even better.
Apply as many layers as possible in order to achieve better insulation.
Soundproofing paint is like 2 in one solution for your problems. It can be a great decorating solution and noise decreasing method as well.
These paints are really thick, and that’s the reason for them being so effective against the noise.
If you don’t have soundproofing paint, then you can go with the regular one.
Of course, keep in mind that these paints aren’t that much effective, but they can do some additional noise reduce if combined with other methods properly.
Try and see it for yourself.
5. Build Your Own Insulation
Now, this one requires a bit more time and effort.
First of all, you need styrofoam.
You probably know what styrofoam is. It’s kind of white foam made of polystyrene foam used in disposable coffee cups and colors.
This material can act as a great noise insulator if you use it for the right purposes.
Therefore, use this material to stick it and fix up to your doors.
You can go with adhesive or even nail it to your doors. It will drastically decrease the noise.
It is one of the most effective ways of acquiring your peace.
However, as we said, this is the white foam (kind of ugly) so you will need to cover it somehow.
The best possible way of covering it would be with paint, or even with some posters.
Like that, in some creative way, your doors will not just be soundproof but beautiful as well.
Other than that, you could use some curtains, or blankets to cover the styrofoam.
Check the next step for further explanation.
6. Try with Blanket and Curtains
Curtains
There are special blankets and curtains made for soundproofing purposes.
However, I doubt that you can find those in your household. If that’s the case, you can improvise.
Curtains are great insulators.
For these, same rules applied- the thicker the curtain, the better. You can use a curtain to cover the doors and block some noise.
Even though I recommend particularly soundproof curtains, you can use normal ones as well.
Just make sure that they are as thick as they can possibly be.
With these, you will be able to cover the styrofoam that I discussed in the previous step, or you can use them singly. This step is quite simple.
All that you will need are curtains (preferably those with eyelets or grommets) a few nails to knock into the wall and garnish.
Blankets
Furthermore, one of the easiest solutions to the noise problem might be a blanket.
Yes, you heard me, a blanket!
So, probably you are wondering who would put a blanket on the door.
Well, since there are special, soundproofing blankets made only for this purpose out of few soundproofing materials, you could be able to improvise one as well just with your own household items, and of course- a blanket.
Soundproofing blankets are thick materials that are ideal for soundproofing.
Since you probably don’t have such a thing in your household, you can use a regular blanket combined with styrofoam (for example).
That way, you will prevent the noise with several thick layers, and on the other hand, hide that ugly styrofoam.
All that you will need are a couple of nails and a blanket to hang on them. I admit, it can sound funny, but it really does the work.
So, what is more important?
Grab those nails and start knocking on the door.
On Soundproofing the Door with Household Items
As you can see, these solutions are quite easy. Most of them do not require a lot of effort, but some of them do.
It only depends on your doors state how much effort will you invest.
Anyway, peace has no price, hence, it will be worth once you lay back in your bed while enjoying the silence.
I hope that you realized how easy it can be to soundproof the doors with household items.
So, what are you waiting?
Grab the tool and start working on your peace.
How to Soundproof a Door with Household Items
You don't have to buy stuff specifically for noise reduction! Here's how to soundproof a door with household items!
Instructions
- Seal the Cracks and Holes
- Improvise Your Own Weatherstrip
- Change The Old Stripping
- Paint The Door, Preferably With Soundproofing Paint
- Build Your Own Insulation
- Try with Blanket and Curtains