Sound proofing your wooden floor

Date Added: July 23, 2007 02:58:01 PM

Wooden flooring used to be cold and noisy, this was due to the not having a very tight fit so air could circulate from below the flooring and the boards would creak together causing an irritable noise.

Modern day flooring suffers from none of these problems due to advances in sound proofing underlay and flooring being tongue and grooved at all four sides creating a tighter fit.

Even when the flooring is laid directly onto joists, the insulation is very good and no cold can be felt through the flooring, which in the long term leaves your room much warmer.

When fitted properly noise from wooden flooring is very little. When laminate floors first arrived they were often fitted without adequate underlay.

As a result the flooring was noisy as there was a gap between the existing sub floor and the new laminate floor. As laminate flooring is made of (high density fibreboard) rather than real wood, the noise was louder than that of real wood. It would often sound very hard and noisy when people walked on it.

Wood floor has more natural sound insulation and when installed properly the sound is very little.

With engineered boards the most common method is to float the floor by gluing the tongue and groove. This creates a gap between the two floors so it needs something in between to take away the noise.

This is where an underlay is used. Underlay ranges from a basic 2mm foam which will soak up the majority of the sound to the high density underlay which has been proven to have high acoustic properties that keep the noise to a minimum.

Generally it is better to pay for a higher quality underlay but be careful to choose a wood floor underlay rather than a carpet underlay as it is not suitable for wood flooring.

Real Oak Floors recommend sound insulation by Envoy-Sonic as it can be used on a range of flooring such as solid, engineered and laminated. It can also be used with under floor heating.

With solid wood floors, the boards are installed by either gluing down directly or by nailing down to an existing sub floor. As a result, the boards do not have the void between and so are not noisy.

Written by Ruth Shann - Professional in wooden flooring installation and finishing since 1999.