How to Soundproof A Door

How to Soundproof a Door

There’s a difference between soundproofing a door so that your band can practice on one side and the rest of the family can relax on the other, versus soundproofing a room so that your baby can sleep soundly in their bed while daily activities go on in the rest of the house. In this article we’re going to talk about both kinds of door soundproofing, starting with the easiest fixes and moving our way up to the larger and more expensive professional soundproofing options.

Why Would You Want to Soundproof a Room?

More and more, people are working from home, and they’re often taking important work calls in one room while the kids or the pets are playing in another. Soundproofing an office space is becoming almost essential, especially for workers who are constantly on calls, such as executives, account managers, salespeople, and more. 

It can also be important to soundproof a room if you’ve got a loud house with a student who needs to study. If you’ve got one kid in college who is living at home, but the rest of the kids are younger and like to make noise, then insulating the college student’s room with soundproofing can be enormously beneficial to their studies. 

Soundproofing can be a great choice if you have a member of the family who works a night or swing shift who sleeps during the day, such as a doctor, nurse, emergency services worker, or any other type of job where needing a quiet house at noon is essential.

And frankly, insulating a room with soundproofing can be important if you’ve got neighbors who are constantly making noise, either playing music loud in their backyard--or the apartment across the hall--and keeping you up late, or waking you up early in the morning. 

So, How Do You Soundproof a Door?

#1. Seal Off Crevices in Your Door

There are a lot of ways to seal the cracks that are in-between the door and the doorframe, and they range from the very simple to the more extravagant. Whichever you choose will depend on your needs and your budget, but the principle of it all is the same: you want there to be as few gaps as possible around your door. Wherever there is a gap between the door and the frame, sound can escape more easily. 

Adding Soundproofing Rubber to the Perimeter of the Door

Basically a form of extreme weatherstripping, you can soundproof a room if you remove the molding from around your door and insert soundproofing rubber--usually a dense form of neoprene--around the perimeter of the door, you’ll be able to keep out (or in) a lot of noise. The steps for this are quite simple: first, you remove the molding around the door, then add soundproofing rubber around the door’s edges, and then add caulk to fill in small gaps and cracks. Note that if you’re going all the way on this there is a product known as “acoustical caulk” which does an even better job at noise suppression than regular caulk. To make sure that you’re getting all of the cracks, turn off all the lights in the room and see where glimpses of light leak through the door’s perimeter, and then caulk them up.

Add Weatherstripping to Your Door

Soundproofing a door with rubber can only do so much, but you’d be surprised at how a product as simple as weatherstripping--regular, old weatherstripping--can dampen the sound that travels between one room and the next. This weatherstripping, which is commonly used on exterior doors and windows, can be a perfect solution for soundproofing interior doors. There are higher qualities of weatherstripping you can buy that are made just for soundproofing, but if you’re on a budget, the regular stuff that you buy at the hardware store will do 90% of the job. 

Add Door Gaskets

This is a step up from the previous two methods, but it can work wonders in soundproofing a door. A door gasket performs the same job as weatherstripping and soundproofing rubber, but it’s a more specialized (and therefore expensive) product. These attach to the top and sides of the door to make a tight seal, as a gasket should, and are typically made from neoprene. 

Add a Door Sweep Under the Door

Keeping noise from coming out of or into the room is going to be especially difficult at the floor level, which is why it’s important to install a door sweep for soundproofing a room. We’ve written about the importance and method of installing door sweeps before, but basically the door sweep is a plastic or rubber flange that seals the bottom of the door to the floor. These are generally easy to install, depending on the type of door. You’ll need to remove the door from its hinges and then use a drill and screws to drive up through the bottom of the door, but the improvement to sound quality is significant.

The second type of soundproofing door sweep is called an “automatic door sweep”. This is a little more high-tech of an option, and it keeps the rubber flange pulled up away from the floor when the door is swinging open and closed, to maintain a smooth door motion, but when the door closes it drops down to create a tight seal. These are a little more expensive, but can be installed the same way the regular door sweeps are--with a drill and screws.

#2. Acoustic Panels

There’s more to soundproofing a room than just relying on the seal around the door. Most people who are serious about soundproofing--people such as musicians, recording artists, voice actors, podcasters, and YouTubers--will use acoustic tiles to line some of their walls, both the doors and other walls. Acoustic panels come in many different varieties, but the concept is the same: they attempt to create more of a soundproof barrier between you and the outside world. The most common acoustic tiles are made from foam, of different thicknesses and textures. Simply attaching thick solid wood can be a benefit, too. And, if all else fails, there are fiberglass soundproofing blankets that can be hung around the room.

#3. Soundproofing a Metal Door

Soundproofing metal doors can be a little trickier, primarily because of what we talked about earlier: installing door sweeps with a drill and screws. That can be tough on a metal door. In this case your best bet is to do the reverse of a door sweep: instead of installing rubber on the bottom side of your door, install that rubber flange on the door threshold. Yes, it will be a little bump you’ll need to be mindful of stepping over, but if it sticks up from the threshold it will rub snugly against the metal door’s bottom and keep a tight seal.

Soundproofing blankets are also great for metal doors. A typical metal door is almost always hollow, making it semi-susceptible to sound transference. But if a fiberglass soundproof blanket is hung on the metal door--typically with suction hooks, then that takes care of your problems.

Vinyl panels can also be used, and while they’re not necessarily any less expensive than a fiberglass soundproofing blanket, they have the benefit of being trimmable to fit the space you’re trying to soundproof, be it a metal door or a strangely-shaped room. 

Conclusion

Getting a soundproofed room isn’t nearly as difficult as you might think it would be, and can be done for very little money depending on the type of room you’re soundproofing and the type of activities you’re trying to keep quiet inside (or stop bothering you from outside.)

Don't forget an automatic door bottom to soundproof your door.