I usually use the orange 3m foam ones or the silicone ones.
The silicone ones are much comfier and seem to block out the sound just as much. The issue is neither block out the sound enough for me.
I also use white noise and turn the tv on and its not enough.
Does anyone have specific earplug recommendations for sleeping please? Side sleeper here so I can’t use wireless earphones 😢
The only thing I’ve found that works well for me are custom earplugs. The silicone ones that look like this:
They were expensive (about €100 for the pair), and I had to go to an audiologist to get them made. I’ve had mine for over 5 years now and can honestly say they have saved my sanity. I live next to a loud street and it was impossible to sleep without them.
Honestly, I’m not sure there’s a place that does this where I live, but I will look into it. Do you know if they can make those online?
Maybe I can find a place that can do it remotely, in Europe. Like they send a mold or something.
I’m not sure but I doubt it. They inject some silicone into your ears with something that looks like a caulking gun, then the mold gets sent off to make the earplugs, which were then mailed to me. Are there places around you that sell hearing aids? They might sell those there. If it’s any help I’m in France, so it’s definitely possible to get them made in Europe.
Thanks! There are some hearing clinics, I guess I should call them up and ask. Though I haven’t seen any such things on their websites.
Hey it doesn’t hurt to ask, hopefully if they don’t produce the earplugs they might be able to tell you where to go. Good luck!!
It may not be perfect for your use case but I use a Bluetooth sleep mask. The speakers are flat and the foam of the mask means you really can’t feel them so side sleeping is no problem. This combined with white noise or binaural beats really helps for me. Your mileage may vary and all that.
Happy Ears have worked quite well for me.
If you’re willing to scroll a while and skip the parts on noise cancelling headphones. This thread has a lot of useful resources and ideas. https://www.s4me.info/threads/noise-cancelling-headphones-oh-joy-and-other-ways-to-block-sound.10350/
Make sure you’re putting them in correctly. Most people don’t. You have to roll them up thin, pull up on your ear (use your other arm over the top of your head) and then insert them deeper than you think. Then let them expand.
I do it but they hurt too much 😣 so i end up having I pull them out further
I use howard leight ll-1-d. They’re a lot more comfortable than the cylindrical foam earplugs and they seal better. You can get a box of 500 pairs for $60-$70.
https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Visibility-Disposable-Dispenser-LL-1-D/dp/B0001YXOC6
You’ll probably be hard pressed to find something that passively blocks out more sound than what you’ve tried, but maybe Loops has something that might be useful: https://www.loopearplugs.com/ ?
I’ll second loops. My SO uses them for band practise, for sleeping when I’m doing something else that’s loud and could wake her, and they work like a charm
I third loops. Was sceptical of the Dreams which are specifically for sleeping, especially considering the cost. But they’re really comfy once you find the right size and the silicone/foam combo works well and lasts. Been using mine for about a year now. Just like Shoobledoops already said I’m not sure they work better than your previous tries though.
(On a side note: You get 15% off with a referral discount, so if you’re interested in trying feel free to DM me for a code.)
I found Loops very comfortable to sleep with and they did a good job blocking out noise in a hospital for a month with the mutes in but make sure to clean them regularly or you’ll get an ear infection like me 🙁
You probably won’t find anything that can do much better without adding in active noise cancelling, which you can’t do. Same problem for me, I feel your pain.
Earplugs can’t completely block out sound, even if perfect ones existed, noise will still make its way through your head.
In the past I’ve just covered up whatever was bugging me with some kind of noise, often pink noise because it sounds like heavy rain. Relaxing music works too.
The problem is that my neighbours keep waking me up in the middle of the night and I always feel exhausted the next day.
Usually it is just around 4-4:40am (every single day) but sometimes it is also around 2-2:30am in addition to that.
Believe it or not this place actually has better noise insulation than the previous one I lived in. At least after they wake me I can sleep in. In the previous place they’d wake me, plus they would wake up at 7am and make really loud noise for an hour.
What noises are they making? Is it talking or music or dogs or what?
I’m going to give similar advice as I just gave someoneb else, so I’m gonna end up sounding like a shill, but: switch up your white noise. You’re trying to block the noise, probably by blocking a pretty wide range of frequencies, but you don’t need to do that; you just need to make the noise more palatable to your sleeping brain, so that you can sleep through it.
I use TMSoft’s White Noise, which has a lot of flexibility. There’s a free version (I think the sound fades out over time) but when I bought the full version it was only like $7. You can mix your own soundscape, which is great. My combo for masking sounds while I sleep is:
- A base of pink noise. That’s like white noise, but instead of being applied equally across all frequencies, its focused more on the levels we hear more. [There are other ‘colors’ of masking noise; you can read up on them and hear samples here .]
- Pink noise was a great base, but it was a little too “one note” for me - it really sounded like I was trying to mask sounds (which is what I was trying to do, but then I became focused and annoyed by the fact I was trying to mask noise). So I tossed a rainstorm on top of the pink noise, to make that more palatable. That worked great, but became annoying over time - I eventually figured out the “rain” was a little too high-pitched, but they have a setting where you can easily adjust the pitch, speed, etc, of any noise in your mix. Once I down-pitched and slowed the rain a bit, it was great!
- Until later that week, when the garbage trucks came around - grumble! I tried blocking that sound but it was too hard - and then I realized I didn’t need to block it, just make it so my sleeping brain didn’t notice it and wake me up. So I tossed an extra “heavy thunderstorm” into my mix (with lowered pitch and increased variability). That worked great, too: the extra, intermittent bass notes mean that my sleeping brain generally ignores garbage trucks, vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, etc.
- There are occasional shreiks of children playing; I tossed in some occasional birdsong to make that less disruptive. Since this was less frequent, I moved the birdsong to be more of an intermittent background feature than a central focus (like the rainstorm is).
- I also tossed in the sound of my cat purring as well, just because.
This mix easily lets me sleep through most noises, because my sleeping brain interprets “garbage truck” as “extra long thunder” and “children screaming as they play” as “loud, noisy birds”, which evolution then tells my brain to ignore.
And I know it sounds like I’m some kind of mix-master, but it was really just paying attention to what was specifically bothering me with the sound I was creating, and then adjusting for that, which the controls make really easy. Like I said, it turned out the rainstorm was just a little high-pitched for me to have on in the background for a long period, but once I’d made it deeper and a little slower, it was great. [TMSoft also lets you import your own sounds to play around with.]
Anyway, I’d suggest adapting your white noise. And I’m not trying to shill TMSoft, but they’ve given me better sleep than I’ve had in years, but check out any white noise app that lets you adapt your own soundscape. At the very least, go to that Wikipedia page I linked back at the beginning and listen to the difference between the noise samples there, because I really think you want to start with pink or maybe brown noise as your base, then adapt from there.
Good luck!
Thank you!! Well sometimes its just their kids crying, and it’s not just crying it’s like straight up screaming/screetching for a very long time. No idea why they do it in the middle of the night or if that’s normal, they are no longer that small. I’ve never heard any kids do this.
On top of that if they occasionally get up because of it, they will slam their doors super loud so that obviously wakes me too if the screetching didn’t.
I will definitely look more into the different types of noise!
Damn, this is incredible.
I haven’t had to use a noise generator in forever, but I think the one I had let me tune it like you’ve mentioned.
These days the only time I ever need to listen to something at night is when I’m in a real bad place mentally, I usually just blast loud music on my headphones until I get too tired to think or get over it.
Might want to consider a noise complaint then, that’s awful…
Unfortunately that’s not a thing where I live and I can’t move anytime soon 😅
These small 3M yellow ones that are half size, still have a big on the large side to allow you to pull them out.
Anybody know the actual name? I neeeeeed new ones!
