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My wife and I share a bathroom with our 2 year old son. His bedroom is on one side and ours is on the other. We'd like to reduce the amount of noise coming from our bathroom so we don't wake him when we shower.

I have already replaced the doors with solid core soundproofing doors. But I'm trying to figure out the best way to further seal off the doors. There is still light and air leaking through the frame of the doors when they're closed, and along the bottom, which means sound is probably transmitting too.

Is there a good style of weatherstripping that would help? Stick on felt? Compression weatherstripping?

Would an automatic door bottom be worth the effort or would a simple door sweep suffice?

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  • Product recommendations are off-topic here, you might want to edit out the penultimate paragraph of your question to reduce the likelihood of the question getting closed.
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Commented Jan 2, 2016 at 15:31
  • Have you ever heard of a white noise machine (no speaker, something more like a special fan)? The one for our smallest runs 24/7; we don't turn it off between sleeping times for convenience. During quieter times (rare in our home) it soaks up the silence so softer noise still do not disturb the little one. singularsleep.com/products/…
    – Damon
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 6:05
  • That's a great suggestion, though for us, we're doing the extra sound proofing on top of also using a white noise maker. Ours is a hepa air filter running on med-high which generates a good deal of white noise. Anyone else reading this should definitely do this, it helps a lot
    – Matt
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 6:08

2 Answers 2

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Rubber air seals along the bottom will be your best bet. An automatic bottom seal may work slightly better, but its a very slight difference over a properly installed gasket seal.

Make sure your door is perfectly balanced in the frame before installing a gasket. You need to make sure the gap is uniform across the entire bottom of the door.

Foam tape would work just as well across the top and sides, and may be cheaper depending on what bottom seal you choose.

Its worth mentioning, unless you have an inch or more gap, its unlikely this extra gap-seal is going to solve the underlying issue. So much of the sound is still going to be transmitted through what are most likely uninsulated interior walls. Soundproofing tends to be a project that just keeps going.

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  • Heavy door + foam weatherstripping was remarkably effective. For the time being I just put a folded bath towel down as a stand-in for a door bottom (it has a rubberized underside, so air doesn't leak through), it works pretty darn well. I ran out of weatherstripping so I only had the top and right side of the door sealed, but it's night and day when you put your ear to the sealed side vs the unsealed side.
    – Matt
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 7:03
  • Any reason for the downvotes?
    – ench
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 22:16
  • No by me, I upvoted each answer here since they all have good info
    – Matt
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 22:17
  • @MatthewLevine, I wasn't referring to you, sorry if it looked that way.
    – ench
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 22:19
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I'd agree with you & Ench. Weather-stripping is the way to go. I had very good sound abatement with the Frost King 3/8's triple ribbed self-stick stuff, tiny but effective. But, don't seal the door's bottom to less than 1/8" if your bath has an exhaust fan. Otherwise, your next step would be to pull the door's trim & spray foam the rough opening shut. If that also fails to make great strides, then you'll have to cut out 12" of drywall, in the middle of the wall (bath or bedroom side), to feed insulation up & down the wall to hopefully really fix the problem (believe it or not you may have to do the ceiling & floor too if the wall fix doesn't fix)...denim insulation would likely be your best bet, but go with fiberglass if denim isn't around.

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  • This is also great advice. Luckily I have some hefty insulation in my attic that is rated for sound proofing. Interesting idea about the extra space under the moldings, I hadn't thought of that. I'm hoping that if I need to further insulate the wall, I can cut much smaller holes and feed some expanding foam in. I have some pretty good old school sheet rock in my walls, which makes it hard as hell to drill into, but hopefully it's good enough for my needs.
    – Matt
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 7:08
  • Beautiful! Yeah, I really hope you can stop at the moldings with a night & day difference. The moldings are missed by most everyone, I'm the 2nd quietest house on my street. One neighbor got his whole house foamed & it didn't do a thing for drafts, HVAC energy nor for landscaper, car & motorcycle noise. I read his foam contract & got him the extra work for free. Boy-o-boy that company was pissed, but the neighbor finally got what he should have gotten the first time...he doesn't even hear planes or copters anymore & his HVAC bills were cut in half.
    – Iggy
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 7:22
  • The draftiness of my house will be my next project. I have a raised foundation and open crawl space. I recently found that my hardwood floors (originals from the 50s) sit directly on the subfloor which has a 1/4 gap between each of the 2x4s. When a gust of wind hits the house it goes straight through the floor. Double paned Windows and heavy doors aren't going to help me there ;)
    – Matt
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 7:28
  • That's my setup too, it's horrible. See if you can just close the crawl space vents, made a noticeable difference at my place. It's common practice for winter & most people just leave them shut, if rains don't stink the house up with a wet dirt smell...I don't have that luxury yet, but it's coming this spring.
    – Iggy
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 7:37

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