What is noise masking?

I spoke with a customer recently who was using heavy, industrial grade earplugs to drown out her noisy new neighbors. You know the kind, right? They're made of hard, stiff plastic and certainly aren't comfortable. In fact, she told me that by 3 am they became jammed into her ear canals like pebbles, causing so much pain she couldn't even think about sleeping. She asked something that gets to the heart of why people struggle to stay asleep: "What's the difference between blocking noise and masking it?" She, like a lot of people, thought they were the same thing, but they aren't.

Noise blocking is similar to building a concrete fortress around your head; you're trying to create total silence. The problem is that those walls almost always leak. Sharp, sudden sounds like a car horn or dog bark can easily pierce that silence and, when they do, are startling. They wallop you out of the blue because your brain was expecting complete silence.

Masking sound, on the other hand, is much more subtle. Instead of fighting for silence, you're simply filling the gaps. It's akin to adding a steady, low hum, such as a fan or light rain, to the mix. You're just smoothing out the landscape and not deleting the outside noise. That way, when the dog barks or the horn beeps, the sound doesn't hit that vacuum of silence. Instead, it hits the cushion of ambient noise and then blends into the background.

That's why we intentionally designed SleepPhones® headphones as we did. We aren't trying to turn your bedroom into a sensory deprivation tank. We're just trying to give your brain a consistent, rhythmic backdrop to prevent any disturbance, sudden or not, from disrupting your peaceful sleep. With flat, padded speakers nestled inside a soft, breathable headband, SleepPhones® headphones mask noise while remaining comfortable enough to wear in any sleeping position.

Find more answers on our "Frequently Asked Questions" page.