Noise and earplugs

Night-time noise disturbs sleep even when you don't fully wake. Block it at the source or wear earplugs; the evidence for white noise is very weak.

• Evidence: Some
• Low effort
• Low cost
• Works: tonight

Why it matters

Noise at night can wake you, and it can also cause brief reactions during sleep, such as body movements, that you won’t remember [1].

The World Health Organization’s 2018 noise guidelines strongly recommend keeping night-time noise outside homes below these levels, because noise above them is linked to disturbed sleep [1]:

Lnight is the average sound level over the night, measured outside at the noisiest side of the home [1]. A 2022 update of the WHO’s review, covering more than 170,000 survey responses, found that when people were asked about noise, each 10 dB increase in night noise roughly doubled to tripled the odds of them saying traffic noise disturbed their sleep a lot [2].

Inside, the level is lower. The WHO estimates walls and windows cut it by about 10 dB with the window open, 15 dB with it tilted or half open, and 25 dB with it closed [1].

How to do it

1. Find the noise. Lie in bed for a few minutes with the lights off and listen. Traffic, a partner snoring, a fridge, a neighbour, a ticking clock?
2. Fix what you can at the source. Move the bed away from the street-side wall, close the window on noisy nights (and handle the heat another way; see room temperature), switch off or move noisy devices, and use heavy curtains and rugs.
3. Try foam earplugs. Roll them thin, pull the top of your ear up and back, and hold them in while they expand. Give them a week; they can feel odd at first. Replace or wash them as the maker says, and stop if your ears hurt or itch.
4. Keep an alarm you can hear. Test that you can hear your alarm, a smoke alarm or a child with earplugs in, or use a vibrating alarm.
5. If you use white or pink noise, keep it quiet and steady. There’s little evidence it helps, and the systematic review warns it could disturb sleep or affect hearing [7]. If you like it, set it as low as still masks the noise, and use a timer.
6. A snoring partner? Earplugs can help you, but loud snoring with pauses in breathing or daytime sleepiness needs a doctor. See when to see a doctor and sharing a bed.

Common mistakes

• Thinking you’ve got used to it. In a 14-day home study of 62 adults, people rated their bedrooms as comfortable whatever the noise levels, but their sleep efficiency still fell as noise rose [3].
• Turning white noise up loud to drown out traffic. Then you’re adding noise all night [7].
• Reading hospital results as proof for your bedroom. The best earplug evidence comes from intensive care units, where noise is constant and patients are very ill [4].

Effect on your sleep score

• Efficiency and wake-ups: in the 62-adult home study, sleep efficiency was 4.7% lower in the noisiest fifth of hours than in the quietest fifth, measured with a wrist device. Noise wasn’t linked to total sleep time or time awake after falling asleep in that study [3].
• REM sleep: in a lab study of 6 healthy volunteers exposed to recorded intensive-care noise, noise cut time asleep, efficiency and REM, and earplugs restored some REM [5]. In a similar study of 14 people, earplugs plus eye masks gave more REM and fewer arousals [6].
• HRV and heart rate: we found no study measuring how earplugs change these on a consumer wearable.

How confident: moderate that noise lowers efficiency; low on how much earplugs improve your score at home.

Evidence

Rated Some. That noise disturbs sleep is well established: the WHO guidelines are based on systematic reviews [1], and the 2022 update rated the evidence moderate when people were asked specifically about noise [2]. Evidence that earplugs fix it is weaker. A Cochrane review of 30 trials in intensive care found low-quality evidence that earplugs, eye masks or both added sleep time and reduced delirium, but most studies using objective sleep measures found no benefit [4]. These are hospital settings, not healthy people at home. The lab studies in healthy people are tiny [5][6]. For continuous white or similar noise, a systematic review of 38 studies rated the evidence that it improves sleep as very low quality, with results ranging from helping to harming sleep [7].

General information for healthy adults, not medical advice. If you have a sleep problem that lasts, read when to see a doctor. Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.