apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

u might try replacing the door with a thicker door....some doors are actually hollow inside.

If you use a draft stopper at the bottom of the door, that would help to some extent. They look like long, fabric sausages.

If you can use nails in your apartment, what about putting a large piece of thick (3" or more) foam in the doorway, and then covering the hole with a thin piece of painted plywood? You can use quarter-round moulding to hold it in place.

I would cut a sheet of carpet padding to the size of the door opening. find a cool fabric that you like & cut that a few inches larger in each direction than the carpet padding. either staple the fabric around the carpet padding alone & use some type of 3m adhesive hook on the door to hold up the new soft panel, or get a large board (mdf, plywood, foam core--whatever you can find/afford) to staple the carpet pad to, wrap the fabric around the whole assembly & staple.

Before you cover the doorway with any of the above suggestions, caulk around the door on both sides. If you use a non-silicone caulk, it will just pull off and leave virtually no marks.

If it is a regular interior door it is probably hollow. Replacing it with a solid door would help.

to soundproof, you need either isolation, mass or resilience... or a combo of the three. sound is energy... waves... vibration. think of it this way and it's easier to combat.

isolation means making the 2 rooms as isolated as possible (even going so far as to not have shared walls)... in your case, caulking, sealing, etc.

mass means simply more material that the sound waves... the suggestion of a solid door above fits in here. as would adhering something heavy to the door (carpet, dynamat, etc... but then you'd have to hide the door itself).

resilience means having something that the sound waves sink into... perhaps try hanging a heavy, multilayered curtain in front of the doors. and again, the carpet/dynamat...

good luck...

Make it pretty! Pull a Ryan and make felt doors that cover both sides. Felt is notorious for blocking sound and keeping drafts out. Even one sliding panel would probably do you some good.

A heavy curtain or quilt hung over the door would help. Another option is a wood panel covered with batting and fabric set in front of the door (or two or three hinged together to make a screen).
Having the bit of air space between the door and the sound treatment is good. Sound waves dissipate as they travel through the different layers (door, air, fabric) especially if they are not connected. A sound treatment larger than the door would also help with sounds traveling around the edges of the door.

novelista is right - there's a post a few months/years back about industrial felt sound blocking doors. Since you dont need to use the door, you could probably just hang it from a rod over your doorway. This could be a lot cheaper than replacing the whole door.

Go to Home Depot and buy soundboard. It's pretty cheap and basically like thick cardboard. One or two sheets in front of the door should help.

I have this technique to make portable acoustic baffles and isolators... It uses hollow-core doors, I just don't use them as actual doors. You could, and they would work fine.

If you don't have one already, buy an inexpensive hollow-core door (they're typically only about $20). Remove the support board along the bottom, to expose the hollow area. Yank out the corrugated cardboard within, and fill the door with that expanding "canned foam." Replace the board on the bottom. Then, on the front and back sides of the door, put a layer of Dynamat, Sheetblok, or thin Neoprene foam. Any finishing touches beyond that are up to you. If you REALLY want to absorb sound, use some kind of protrusion baffle like an egg crate foam, or line the door with slats of wood. Anything to trap the sound.

heavy drapes are a perfect solution- temporary, good-looking, easy to make. many recording studios use moving blanket s as soundproofing or drapes, with grommets to hold them up- these are cheap, lightweight, effective, and attractive. or for something fancier, velveteen drapes stenciled with gold paint. you can add soundboard or carpet underlayment felt behind them if you need extra insulation.
a lovely drape might make a nice "headboard" as well.

A clock radio.

When I shared a dorm room in the USAF, I had a roommate who enjoyed - Um, himself - in the evenings...
...so he'd put Hank Williams Jr every night on to disguise the sounds.

I did a project where I added soundproofing to my exterior door, I am sure you can apply these same ideas to your interior door. The key is that the door will have to be airtight to prevent sound transfer.

Here is a link to the article:

http://soundproofingwithdave.com/2007/06/soundproofing-exterior-door.html

Just leave a comment on my blog if you have any questions.

take some fabric and make a door cover. Then buy some cheap insluation, stuff it the fabric sack and then put the sack over the door, You leave the part by the hinges open or velcro it shut.

Stick a bookcase in front of the door, fill it with books. Problem solved.

I had this problem in one place I owned. I took the door down, and filled it with that insulation foam. I used a threshold insulation thing, that stopped up the space under the door. Then, to keep the paper thin walls from transmitting sound so much, I bought sound board at Home Depot, wrapped it in pretty fabric, and used a few nails to attach it to the walls.

Then, on top of all that, I hung pretty carpets, and thick wool items over it as art, to help break up the sound more. I had some little quilts I made on both sides of my door, and a much larger rug hung over the fabric covered sound board.

This helped prevent my hearing my roommates spanking fetish occur in the other room. With out that, I might have been content to just live in a room where sound carried.

And here's another thought -- those who have roommates should respect the other guy's privacy and be more quiet!