How To Soundproof Your Garden Room
There may be several reasons you need a soundproofed garden room, whether using it as a studio, a practice room or perhaps even a space to record videos or podcasts. Soundproofing your existing garden room or soundproofing a new room as it’s built can save a bundle of money in studio fees and allow you to feed the creative beast 24 hours a day in the safety and security of your own garden.
You might have thought of just adding some egg cartons to the walls, but that definitely isn’t going to do the job if you’re serious about soundproofing.
Here are our top tips for soundproofing your garden room.
What Is Soundproofing and How Does It Work?
Soundproofing is just what it sounds like. It’s the use of any means which intend to reduce sound in a space. Generally, this is done by building the mass of all the surfaces in a room. This is done with the use of damping materials. Different damping materials will do their job differently. Still, they each serve to reduce significantly or ideally eliminate the vibrations caused by mechanical or electrical energy generated by movement, sound and vibrations.
Where Do I Start?
The best time to start is when you initially build the garden room, but of course, that may not be possible for everyone. If you are starting from the ground up, add MDF boards, drywall, or plasterboard during wall construction. There are also purpose-made acoustic wall insulations that offer both thermal and sound insulation. Creating integral soundproofing at build time is the most effective way to soundproof your garden room.
If you are soundproofing an existing garden room, you’ll need to add thermal insulation or acoustic mineral wool to the hollow wall frames and between the roof rafters. Once the insulation is in place, then you’ll need to clad the inside of your garden room – ideally with cement particleboard, but OSB board or a couple of layers of acoustic grade plasterboard will work as well.
What About The Floor?
Most garden rooms will have been built upon a solid concrete base which means that sound won’t leak out through the floor. Most suppliers will have covered this base with a good quality laminate. We recommend adding some vibration-absorbing matting in between the laminate and the concrete base.
Windows and Doors
Here we come to the weakest links. A purpose-built studio will usually have just one door and no window. The opposite is often said of garden rooms where natural light flooding into the space is one of the delights of owning a garden room. Again, if you are at the stage of constructing the garden room, consider a design with a solid wood door rather than large bi-folds. A windowless space won’t be best for your state of mind, so choose double or even triple glazing to do away with any potential noise pollution. Consider adding an extra window to the new internal stud frame you’ve created.
When it comes to doors, choose heavy fire doors and a system that uses two doors; one on the old wall and one on the new frame.
Ensure that all the door and windows seals are top quality and airtight.
Ventilation
The soundproofing you’ve already done means that your garden room will be airtight and highly insulated. The downside to that will be that the temperature will rise. You’ll need to insulate any ducts and use attenuators or silencers to reduce the system sound when adding ventilation.
Bright Lights
Many people choose recessed downlights in their garden room; however, this type of lighting will jeopardise the sanctity of your soundproofing. Therefore, we would recommend choosing pendant lighting, LED strips or lamps.
If you’re looking for a garden room – why not check out all the listings here and have a conversation with our sellers to see how they can help realise your soundproofed garden room dreams.
