The sirens are blaring, the car alarm should be outlawed, the garbage pick-up at 5:30 a.m. is worse than a rooster in the room — along with your neighbor just purchased his kid a electric guitar. You’ll have to grit your teeth till the kid goes off to college, but the remaining part of the racket may get a great dampening down in the right acoustical curtains.
Wool Sandwich
When replacing antique windows with triple-pane glass is not an option, elect for sandwich-style acoustical curtains. The drapes are made out of an in-facing ornamental fabric along with a blackout backing. Sandwiched between the two layers is a wool center that acts as a sound absorber and air filter. Wool has spaces between and inside its fibers that soak up noise vibrations. Sandwich acoustical curtains with wool cores arrive in grommet, rod-pocket, tab-top and pleated tops, and at a selection of decorative fabrics. The blackout feature is a bonus so you will have no excuse for losing sleep.
Opulent Velvet
Go for play stage drapes as drapes, and the sole audience sounds you’ll be hearing are applause. Lined velvet drapes are noise sponges — and elegant too. Try installing them to drop in the ceiling and pool on the floor at a living room that faces the street. On a wall of windows, pull the drapes to get every other window shut to turn down the daytime amount — binder them wide open for gatherings in which the exterior decibels increase the party vibe. Draw the drapes completely across the wall to get a more tranquil and romantic evening together with the chaos of the city roads magnificently muffled.
Sheer Stillness
When you love the sunlight that pours in through your windows but not the constant clamor, lighten up. A sound-absorbing, modified polyester curtain is not quite a sheer, despite the fact that it’s gauzy enough to billow in a breeze and let in the light. To get a bedroom that gets unwelcome racket at inconvenient times, heavier drapes over modified polyester “sheers” is a standard look with unconventional noise-bashing properties. Utilize the same brocade since the bedspread for the drapes, lined with a noise-absorbing cloth. Then float the specially sound-reducing sheers straight over the windows and sleep in.
The Big Guns
Life under a flight path — or some other constant, loud, acoustical irritation — could shred your nerves. It is actually unhealthy. Loud, disruptive noise raises your blood pressure, lowers your work efficacy, causes allergies and ulcers, and drains your energy. If moving or replacing windows aren’t possible, you can barricade yourself supporting curtain panels specifically engineered to deaden noise. Window panels made out of acoustical foam or fiberglass cores surrounded by quilted aluminized fabric could be optimized with extra mass-loaded vinyl, another effective barrier to noise. These are not your graceful, assembled drapes, however you can hang them on hinged poles that swing upon the window to block open and sound, nearly like shutters, to allow air and daylight. Desperate situations call for desperate measures. A sliding, noise-blasting curtain panel could be mounted to slip over the window if you have to rest and slide back to hide under a drapery wall if it’s not needed.