Sensory positive home: Auditory considerations
This is the second ‘Sensory Positive Home’ post to guide you through creating a neurodivergent-friendly home. If you have sensory issues, your home has a big impact on your wellbeing. The way your home looks, feels, sounds and smells is really important, and it’s crucial for the rooms in your home to support the way you need to feel and behave in those spaces. The right interior design decisions will give you a home that reduces overwhelm, is uplifting, and provides a place of retreat for you to regulate and be your best self.
This week we are looking at auditory considerations - the links between the sounds in your home and your wellbeing. Whilst I can’t stop your kids from stampeding around shouting, I can suggest ways to make it grate less!
Texture
The textures in your home are actually responsible for the way it sounds! The more textile elements you can bring into your home, the more dampened the sound will be. A wall of glass (i.e. bifold doors) might bring you closer to nature with a view of the garden, but it makes for a noisier space. Crittall or Victorian style mullions will help to break up the reflective surface a little.
Use curtains or roman blinds, as well as voile curtains over roller blinds, to soften echoey rooms. Use rugs and carpets over hard floors to reduce noisy footsteps and echoey reflections. Make sure plenty of your furniture and lighting includes fabric elements, especially in the kitchen which can have lots of hard surfaces. So that means making sure your kitchen chairs or bar stools have cushions, and even elements like a tablecloth can help. As a bonus, all these soft furnishings bring more personality to your space too!
Note: if you struggle with lots of fabric textures, consider other ways of softening the texture of hard surfaces in your home. That could mean picking an oak butcher block worktop instead of a marble one, or adding some wooden storage to your bathroom. You can also reduce the reverberation of sound in your home by having more ‘stuff’ - more angles to break up the repeating pattern of sound waves. This is only going to make a difference to quite empty spaces, but in a fully tiled bathroom for example, a row of wall hooks for your towels and a rattan laundry basket could make all the difference.
You can go even further to create a room which feels ‘hushed’ by using something like grasscloth or even fabric on the walls. You need to decide which bits of your interior to invest in and where you can take a more economic approach, so whilst grasscloth/fabric walls are quite an expensive option, this might be the smart investment for you. A DIY alternative is to make fabric panels by stapling fabric around large canvases (1m x 1.5m canvas currently costs £28 from Hobbycraft).
Interior: Ben Pentreath, Image: Paul Massey
Things that go TICK in the night
Many neurodiverse people are very sensitive to electrical and mechanical noises around the home too. You can get near silent fans and clocks if those noises bother you. I find about 30-35dB comfortable for a fan (a Dyson fan is 46dB on the lowest setting) so do your research before you buy. I am bothered by the sound of electricity in plugboards at night, so I have my phone charged on a 2m cable to so that the plugboard isn’t too close to my ears! Eliminating the plugboard all together is ideal and when I get around to it I will replace my wall sockets with USB ones.
I also play ambient sounds such as rain at night (my favourite app is Relax Melodies). This drowns out other noises that may bother me, replacing a negative sensory input with a positive one which I find relaxing. Not interior design but a good tip nonetheless!
When you buy large appliances, look at the dB rating to find quieter options, and move washing machines and tumble driers out of the kitchen if you can. In my previous flat we didn’t have a lot of space but I created a laundry nook in the hallway and dampened the noise with a curtain.
If you have sound-sensitive children in your life, consider their play space. Whilst they might not be old enough to recognise the impact a noisy play environment has on the way they are feeling, it undoubtedly makes it harder for them to be their best selves. Rigging up a fabric play tent, big floor cushions and fabric ‘sling’ bookcases are all ways to create noise-reducing play spaces for sound-sensitive children.
If you work from home, you can transfer this advice to your own workspace too. Forget what a home office ‘should’ look like and think about what it could look like if it was completely built around your sensory needs. Right, I’m off to research indoor water features for mine!
How have you reduced negative sound sensitivity in your home? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook. Next week we will be taking a look at smells!