Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-01-20 Origin: Site
When selecting flooring for a home or commercial space, one may overlook an important element, which is soundproofing and how it can affect the acoustics of a room and sound travel between multistory buildings. This is quite important for multi-level homes and apartments.
Vinyl plank flooring is a popular choice for both older and newer homes due to its affordability, durability, and ease of installation. However, when it comes to soundproofing, this type of flooring is the best solution for soundproofing without completely reengineering the core structure of your home or building.
Vinyl plank flooring provides good impact sound insulation compared to harder surfaces like tile and wood. The composition of vinyl planks are able to absorb sound far better due to the way that it is engineered. Vinyl planks are often equipped with a layer of padding or another type of underlayment, which helps absorb sounds from furniture, foot traffic and dropping things. The underlayment is most commonly made of foam, cork, or rubber, and these materials help dampen the vibrations that occur from daily use.
The noise reduction of vinyl planks can vary depending on both the core layer and the underlayment type, density, thickness and material. Higher-quality vinyl planks with thicker, denser underlayment offer far better noise reduction than thinner, lower-quality versions. As a result, when properly installed, vinyl plank flooring can reduce foot traffic noise a significant amount and make a space quieter. Feel free to check out proluxefloor.com to explore the many available vinyl plank flooring options.
Airborne sound is more challenging to eliminate. By installing vinyl planks with a thick, high-quality underlayment, it’s possible to reduce the amount of passing sound such as conversations or music. The underlayment can help reduce the transmission of airborne noise between floors. It is important to select vinyl plank flooring with a thicker underlayment layer or add additional underlayment yourself. Some vinyl planks can be used without any additional layering, but for the better sound isolation, an underlayment specifically designed for soundproofing can be added underneath the vinyl planks.
Wood flooring has been used forever, and is a tried and true flooring material, but with that being said, it was never intended to be a great sound isolating type of flooring. Wood is naturally occurring, thus there isn’t as much that can be done to it to help with soundproofing.
Wood flooring, in general, tends to be noisier than vinyl plank flooring due to the nature of the material. Wood is dense, and is most commonly installed on top of a wood sub floor, so it does not absorb vibrations and impacts well. Creaking from walking can add an additional element of noise that is transmitted between rooms and floors. Engineered wood may perform better than solid wood in terms of noise reduction. It is produced in multiple layers, so there is a bit less sound transmission coming through the board itself to the subflooring and below.
Wood is more effective with stopping sound from talking, barking and music. Wood is ok at reflecting sound waves and can reduce some noise transmission from the air, such as conversations or television noise.
Tile flooring made of ceramic, porcelain, or stone, is highly durable. Unfortunately, tile flooring can have a host of issues regarding soundproofing, especially between residential units. Thuds are far easier to be heard with tile, as essentially none of the impact is capable of being absorbed on such a hard surface.
Tile flooring is one of the least effective flooring materials for impact sound insulation. The hard tiles make them less able to absorb vibrations from footsteps and dropped objects, or moving furniture, and the sound will bounce off the tile and reverberate across the entire floor. This lack of sound absorption can lead to the most sound passing through to different units compared to all other types of flooring, especially in multi-level buildings.
Tile does have the ability to block out and reduce some sound waves from airborne noises like tvs and talking, and the thicker the tile, the better soundproofing it will provide. With that being said, it is certainly not a soundproof material in and of itself, and soundproof rooms such as music studios will refrain from using tile for this purpose. Of course, homes are made for living, not just simply being as quit as possible, so tile is still found in many homes, despite the lower quality soundproofing characteristics.
When it comes to soundproofing, there is no perfect solution, so one must strike a balance between livability, usability and soundproofing ability. Each flooring material, whether it be vinyl, wood or tile, has some sort of soundproofing or reducing capabilities. Vinyl plank flooring offers the best soundproofing properties, and is generally an affordable choice for reducing footfall noise. If soundproofing is a main factor in your decision making, vinyl plank flooring with an underlayment may be the top choice for you and your next installation.
