Dealing With College Roommates: Effective Soundproofing Solutions for Students

Sam Bowman

Your college life is likely to be filled with fresh and positive experiences. There are many challenges that new students aren’t prepared for. Living with roommates is chief among them.

It’s increasingly common for students to live with strangers even late into their college experience and beyond. Gen Z’s money habits lean towards being more conservative, largely due to economic challenges like major recessions. This, in turn, impacts attitudes to housing. A lot of this generation are keen to buy a home after college, so are making early decisions that enable them to save for down payments. These cost-cutting measures include long-term shared rentals and dorm living.

Shared rentals save money, but it can have the downside of having to navigate roommates’ difficult behavior. A particularly common issue is the noise that they might make. Fortunately, you can adopt soundproofing solutions that help you to live peacefully while studying and readying yourself to transition into the world beyond shared housing.

Soundproofing a Dedicated Space

One of the benefits of sharing a house when you’re in college is that you may have additional space available. This might be a garage, basement area, or spare room. With a little planning and ingenuity, you can transform this space into a peaceful sanctuary you can retreat to when things get a little too noisy.

The steps to effectively soundproofing a garage are relatively straightforward and can help you gain a place of quiet and focus. You can begin by assessing the space to better understand what it’s made of, how many windows it has, and the type of door. This can dictate the measures you need to take. The most common step for soundproofing a garage is installing insulation on the walls, doors, and ceiling rafters. If there are windows, adding acoustic tape around any gaps is a relatively affordable solution.

If you’re transforming the basement into a quiet space, your focus is likely to be on the ceiling. This is where most of the sound from the rest of the house will travel. The simplest measure is to add mass to the ceiling, which many people do with insulation or even thick carpeting.

Minimizing Noise Through Design

If you’re not lucky enough to have an additional space in your shared home to retreat to, your efforts may be focused on making your own room a sanctuary. Putting up acoustic panels or insulation material isn’t likely to make your room a particularly cozy or attractive space, though. Thankfully, there are some design choices you can make that maintain the quiet for study and sleep while also keeping your room a pleasant space to be in.

Firstly, think about the positioning of your furniture. Some larger items placed against adjoining walls in your home can help to dampen the noise traveling through. Large bookcases, particularly those with a lot of books on them can be an effective option here. If you have a wardrobe, this — alongside all the clothes you keep in it — can help reduce noise when pushed up against a shared wall. Proper furniture arrangement is crucial for dorms, as many soundproofing measures are forbidden.

Heavy fabrics can be particularly useful for absorbing sound. You could hang a thick curtain inside the door to your room to prevent the noise from coming in from there. Adding a few thick rugs or carpets on your floor may also minimize the sound from downstairs spaces if you’re in an upstairs bedroom. Don’t forget soft furnishings, too. You want to reduce the hard surfaces that sound from outside your room can travel through and reflect from. Adding cotton or wool pillows and the occasional blanket on top of your furniture can help you soundproof a room.

Adopting Personal Soundproofing

Even if there are limited things you can do with the design of your space, you don’t need to be entirely inconvenienced by the noise of your roommates. With relatively little investment, you can get some personal accessories that help you to minimize the effect of unwanted sounds.

These can include:

Noise-canceling headphones: If you want to block out the noise made by your roommates entirely, noise-canceling headphones can be a useful tool. If you need to knuckle down to some studying, you can connect these to your laptop or smartphone, choose soothing sounds, and maintain your focus. They’re also good even if you just want to watch a movie without being disturbed by the noise of others. They come in different designs, from the can-style headsets to in-ear options, so you can choose which you’re most comfortable using.
Earplugs: If you don’t want to spend your time in your home listening to music on noise-canceling headphones all the time, earplugs can be a good alternative. These may not permanently eliminate noise, but they can undoubtedly dampen it to the point that it’s less disruptive. If it’s less the volume of sound but rather noise distortions you find overwhelming, getting earplugs that are designed to minimize sound sensitivity can be helpful, too. These devices allow you to hear others while filtering out the most unpleasant frequencies.

Everybody has individual needs and preferences when it comes to personalized sound management, though. Some tools may not be right for you, so it’s important to look at reviews and even tutorials on their use to see if these items will likely help. Your friends and family may also have recommendations based on their experiences.

Conclusion

Dealing with difficult college roommates is a challenging part of sharing accommodation. There are some effective steps you can take, such as soundproofing a garage or adopting personal devices like earplugs. It’s important not to rely upon these measures entirely. Having frank yet calm discussions with your roommates should always be the first port of call. Open communication offers the opportunity to collaborate on solutions that work for everyone.