Soundproofing nursery/kid room doors

[jeromedawg]

Hey all,

Was curious what, if anything, you guys have done to soundproof a room or multiple rooms in your homes. This would be particularly in the case of having two [younger] kids, each in separate rooms that are close together, where you don't want either one of them waking the other up in the middle of the night via screaming and crying (particularly if you are trying to let the younger one CIO) etc.

We have our daughter sleeping with us in our room and our son is down the hall in a room of his own. Sometimes they will wake one another up and usually it's our daughter waking our son up even if both our door and his door is closed. But more often than not, if one of us forgets to close our door for any given reason, and she's screaming her head off, he'll wake up half the time (this is the worst in the middle of the night - it's bad enough to have one going but the chain reactions are brutal). 

I've read about door seal kits but those appear to cost quite a bit (in the range of $200+!). Are there more economical ways to handle this sort of a thing?

[sokoloff]

For the bottom of the door, a draft stopper (or a rolled/folded up towel) work OK temporarily.

My experience is that the kids will also eventually learn to ignore it to some degree.

We have some of the actuated door sweep seals on our office doors and they are great, but I wouldn't bother with it at home if it's a temporary thing.

[CptCool]

Check for air sealing by doing the following with two people:

When it is dark, have one person shine a flashlight around the edge of the door & note where light is shining through. If you can see light, then sound is able to easily pass through as it is not air sealed. If it was a prehung door you're probably fine around the edges, but the bottom will be open. If that's the case, get one of those bean-bag-like door sealers that goes under the bottom of the door. This should help significantly and is cheap and quick to fix.

Any other fixes will be costly and probably not worth it, but the door is likely where the sound is coming through the most

[sisto]

If you have hollow core doors you could consider replacing them with solid core doors. That would make a big difference.

[HipGnosis]

One thing that will help that is fairly easy is putting soft materials on the adjoining wall(s) and on the doors.  Blankets, towels or even rugs.  The heavier the better.

[FLBiker]

What about a white noise machine?  They cost way less than $200.

[leftcoastenvy]

I second the white noise machine. My kids sleep with an air purifier running and it helps dampen all the noises.

[Spork]

I'll not call it "sound proof" ... but certainly "less sound".  When we built our house, we put rolled insulation in some of the interior walls and in the ceilings between floors.

[trammatic]

For the kids, and not necessarily the sound thing, we did the opposite.  Put them all in one room, and they learn to sleep through noises.  We found that the 2 yr old sleeps better, even with the baby waking because he knows that the sibling is there.  It's scarier for him to be all alone when something "wrong" is happening down the hallway.  Also, for the CIO fun, we use a second bedroom as the "crying" room.  If baby needs to keep crying, they have to do it alone and are moved into a pack and play in the other room.  After a night or two, they calm much quicker since they want to be near brother.

Good luck!