How to Block Out Snoring
Short answer
To block out snoring, play brown noise all night through a speaker that can play deep sounds, set just loud enough to cover the loudest snores. Earplugs plus brown noise works better than either alone. Falling asleep first helps most. See a doctor if the snoring comes with pauses in breathing, gasping or daytime sleepiness.
Read This Part First
This page is about making snoring easier to sleep through, mostly with sound masking: covering one sound with a steadier one, so your brain stops noticing it. Before any of that, one thing needs to be clear, because getting it wrong is the only way a page like this can do harm.
Snoring that comes with pauses in breathing, gasping or choking is a medical warning sign, not just a nuisance. So is loud snoring together with heavy daytime sleepiness, waking up unrefreshed, or morning headaches. Obstructive sleep apnoea is common and often goes undiagnosed. It is linked to serious health problems, and it can be treated. If any of that describes the person beside you, the right next step is a doctor, not a better masking sound.
And here is the part that is special to this page. The partner is usually the only person who knows the snoring is happening, because the person snoring is asleep. Masking works by making you stop noticing. If it works, you may also remove the only warning in the household that something needs checking. That is a real trade-off, so make it on purpose: notice the snoring properly once, before you set out to stop noticing it every night.
None of this means you should lie awake in the meantime. Diagnosis and treatment take weeks or months, and you need to sleep tonight. The rest of the page is about tonight.
Why Snoring Is the Hardest Sound to Mask
People who have managed to cover traffic or a noisy street sometimes expect snoring to be easier, because it is quieter. It is usually harder. Knowing why stops you from deciding that noise does not work for you.
There is no wall in the way. Every other noise in your home passes through something on its way to you (glass, brick, a floor), and each of those takes some of it away. Snoring happens on the other side of a pillow. It arrives at full strength, with nothing removed, from about a metre from your head.
It is a deep sound, which is good news and bad news. Most of the sound of snoring is low and deep, with some higher tones on top. That is why brown noise is the right tool: its energy is in the same deep range. It is also why the obvious fix, earplugs, works worse here than almost anywhere else. The next section explains why.
It comes and goes, and masking struggles with that. A motorway hum stays at one level, so a covering sound only has to sit above it. Snoring rises and falls with every breath. A volume set against the quiet part lets every loud peak through, and the peaks are what wake you. You have to cover the loudest moment, all night, so the sound must be louder than the average would need.
Its rhythm keeps catching your ear. Steady sounds fade from your awareness within minutes. Snoring follows the slow rhythm of breathing, so each snore feels like a separate event instead of blending into the background. Hearing is built to notice change, and snoring is change, over and over.
Some snores also whistle. If you hear a high, thin, whistling tone as well as a low rasp, brown noise will cover the rasp and leave the whistle on top. In that case, try pink noise, which reaches higher, using the buttons on the player above.
Why Earplugs Fall Short Against Snoring
Earplugs are the first thing everyone tries, and against snoring they are the least suited tool. This is not a criticism of earplugs, which are excellent against the sounds they are made for. They just block the wrong range for snoring.
Earplugs block high sounds well and deep sounds poorly. A foam plug takes far more out of high sounds than deep ones. Industry measurements usually show that it cuts deep sounds by about 15 to 25 decibels, but higher sounds by up to about 40 decibels (Hearing Review). Snoring is mostly deep sound, exactly where the plug does least. You remove the thin higher tones and keep the rasp, which was the part keeping you awake.
There is also a hard limit that no earplug can pass. Sound reaches your inner ear through the bones of your head, not only through the ear canal, so blocking the canal cannot block everything. Measurements put that limit at about 40 to 60 decibels (Berger, Kieper & Gauger, 2003). A very loud snore, from a metre away with nothing in its path, can come close to that limit.
And they have to stay in for eight hours. If you sleep on your side, the pillow presses the plug deeper or works it loose. Many people wake with sore ears. This is the practical reason earplugs fail even when they should work.
The honest conclusion: the two together beat either one alone. Earplugs take out the higher sounds that the noise would otherwise have to cover. Brown noise covers the deep sounds that get past the plugs. Their weak spots do not overlap. This site sells neither, so there is no reason to pick a winner. See the full comparison.
Setting It Up So It Actually Works
Use brown noise, through something that can play it. A phone speaker cannot play the deep part of brown noise that covers a snore. Through a phone you will hear a hiss and decide it failed. You need a speaker with real bass, or a sound machine of a decent size. This is the most common reason this method lets people down.
Set the volume against the loudest snores. Lie down, listen through several breaths, and set the volume so the loudest part stops standing out. Setting it against the average feels more sensible, but it does not work. You will get through the quiet parts and be woken by every peak.
Put the sound source between you and the snoring, and close to you. This helps twice. Closer to your head, a lower volume does the job. And less of the sound reaches the person beside you, who did not ask for this and is not the one with the problem.
Check that you can both live with it. You share the room, so this affects two people. A sound the snorer finds annoying turns one problem into two, so spend ten minutes agreeing on it while you are both awake. Brown noise is usually easy to agree on, because it sounds low and warm, not hissy.
Run it all night, not just at the start. Masking only works while the sound plays. A sleep timer that ends at two in the morning hands the room back to the snoring at the time of night when waking is hardest to recover from. Use a browser tab to test the sound, but know that a tab stops as soon as the phone locks. That is true of every website, including the generator on this site. For the whole night, you need an installed app or a sound machine.
The Things That Help More Than Sound Does
None of these need you to install anything, and in most homes they work better than every sound-based fix on this page. It would be dishonest to leave them out.
Fall asleep first. This is the most effective single step, and it costs nothing. Getting to sleep through snoring is very hard. Staying asleep through it is much easier, because it takes far more noise to wake you than to stop you dropping off. Going to bed twenty minutes earlier does more than any device.
Side sleeping, for the snorer. Snoring is often worse when lying on the back, and changing position is a standard first suggestion. It costs nothing to try for a week.
Think about separate rooms, and do not see it as a failure. Many couples sleep better apart and stay happily together. The reluctance is usually about what people think, not about what works. If one person loses sleep every night for years, that is a real health cost paid to avoid an awkward conversation.
And go back to the first section. If the snoring is loud, or comes with pauses, gasping or daytime sleepiness, nothing on this page is the answer. These are things to do while you wait for an appointment.
What This Will Not Do
It will not make loud snoring silent. Masking raises the background so the snoring stops standing out. Against a really loud snore, one you can hear from another room, the noise would need to be so loud that it becomes a problem itself. The honest answer is that sound alone will not solve it.
It will not help the person snoring. Nothing here treats snoring. It only helps the person listening to it.
It will not keep playing when your phone locks. This is worth repeating, because it is the most common disappointment. A browser tab stops when the screen locks, so a web page cannot play through the night. That is a browser rule, not a fault of one site.
It is not a diagnosis and not a treatment. If you came here because the snoring frightens you rather than annoys you, act on that feeling.
If You Only Read One Paragraph
Snoring is the hardest sound to cover. It comes from a metre away with no wall in the way, it is mostly deep sound, and it rises and falls with every breath. So the covering sound has to beat the loudest moments, not the average. Use brown noise through a speaker that can really play deep sounds. Set it just above the loudest part of each breath, place it between you and the snorer, and run it all night. Earplugs alone fall short here, because they block least of the deep sounds that snoring is made of, but earplugs plus brown noise beat either one. Falling asleep first helps more than any device. And snoring with pauses, gasping or daytime sleepiness needs a doctor, not a louder sound.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best noise to block out snoring?
Brown noise, in most cases. Most of the sound of snoring is low and deep. Masking only works when the covering sound and the noise are in the same range, so a sound with most of its energy in the deep range is the right match. White noise puts most of its energy far above the snoring, where there was never a problem. If the snore has a high whistle as well as a low rasp, pink noise reaches higher and is worth trying.
Do earplugs work for snoring?
Less well than people expect, for a clear reason. Earplugs block deep sounds least: roughly 15 to 25 decibels for deep sounds, against up to about 40 decibels for higher sounds. Snoring is mostly deep sound, exactly where the plug does least. There is also a limit of about 40 to 60 decibels, because sound reaches the inner ear through bone and tissue, and no earplug can pass that limit. Earplugs combined with brown noise work better than either alone, because their weak spots do not overlap.
How loud should the noise be to mask snoring?
Set it against the loudest part of each breath, not the average. Snoring rises and falls. A volume chosen while it is quiet will let every peak through, and the peaks are what wake you. Lie down, listen through several breaths, and turn it up only until the loudest moment stops standing out. Louder than that gains nothing and creates a second problem for the person beside you.
Why does brown noise not work against my partner's snoring?
Usually the speaker, not the noise. Most of brown noise is very deep sound, and a phone speaker cannot play it. So you hear the thin top of it and none of the part that does the covering. Use headphones to check, then a speaker with real bass overnight. The second most common cause is a volume set against the average snore instead of the loudest. The third is a snore with a high whistle, which brown noise will not cover.
When is snoring a medical problem?
When it comes with pauses in breathing, gasping or choking, or when loud snoring comes with heavy daytime sleepiness, waking up unrefreshed, or morning headaches. Those are signs of obstructive sleep apnoea. It is common, often undiagnosed, linked to serious health problems, and treatable. See a doctor instead of looking for a better masking sound. A partner is usually the only person who can notice this, because the person snoring is asleep.
Can masking noise stop me hearing something important?
At a correctly set volume, it should not. Masking works on contrast, so a sound well above the background still gets through. That is the same reason a loud snore wakes you when the volume is too low. The real concern on this page is different. If you manage to stop noticing the snoring, you may also stop noticing the pauses or gasping that would have led to a doctor's appointment. Listen properly once before you set out to stop noticing it every night.
What works better than noise for a snoring partner?
Falling asleep first. It costs nothing and works better than any device. Getting to sleep through snoring is much harder than staying asleep through it, so going to bed twenty minutes earlier does more than most fixes. Side sleeping for the snorer is a standard first suggestion and worth trying for a week. Separate rooms work for many couples, and the reluctance is usually about what people think, not about what works. Masking is something you add to these, not a replacement for them.
Can I use a website to play noise all night?
No, and no website can. Browsers pause a tab as soon as the screen locks or you switch apps, and that stops any sound it plays. That rule applies to every site, including this one. A web page is the right way to test whether brown noise covers your partner's snoring, which takes a few minutes. To play from bedtime to morning, you need an installed app or a sound machine.