How to Block Out Snoring
Snoring combines three properties that each make masking harder, and it has none of the things that make traffic easy. Here is what genuinely helps, in the order it helps.
Read This Part First
This page is about making snoring easier to sleep through. Before any of it, there is one thing worth being clear about, 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 clinical sign, not a nuisance. So is loud snoring paired with heavy daytime sleepiness, waking unrefreshed, or morning headaches. Obstructive sleep apnoea is common, it is frequently undiagnosed, it is associated with serious health consequences, and it is treatable. If any of that describes the person beside you, the right next step is a doctor rather than a better masking sound.
And here is the part that is specific to this page. The partner is usually the only person who knows the snoring is happening, because the person doing it is asleep. Masking works by making you stop noticing. If you succeed, you may also have removed the only signal in the household that something needs looking at. That is a real trade and it is worth making deliberately: notice it once, properly, before you set about not 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 successfully covered traffic or a noisy street sometimes assume snoring will be easier, because it is quieter. It is usually harder, and understanding why saves you from concluding that noise does not work for you.
There is no wall in the way. Every other intrusion in your home has been through something on its way to you — glazing, brickwork, a floor — and each of those strips energy out of it. Snoring happens on the other side of a pillow. It arrives at full strength, with nothing removed, from a source about a metre from your head.
It is low-frequency, which is the good news and the bad news. The bulk of snoring energy sits low, typically below a few hundred hertz, with harmonics running upward from there. Low frequency is why brown noise is the right tool, since it puts its energy in the same region. It is also why the obvious solution — earplugs — performs worse here than almost anywhere else, for reasons the next section covers.
It is intermittent, and masking hates intermittent. A motorway hum is a fixed level and a masker only has to sit above it. Snoring rises and falls with every breath, so a level set against the quiet part lets every peak through, and the peaks are what wake you. You have to mask the loudest moment, all night, which means running the sound higher than the average would ever require.
It is modulated at a rate the ear finds interesting. Steady sounds fade from awareness within minutes. Snoring cycles roughly with breathing, which is slow enough that each cycle registers as a separate event rather than blending into a texture. Hearing is built to detect change, and snoring is nothing but change on a loop.
Some snores also whistle. If what you are hearing has a high, thin, tonal component rather than only a low rasp, brown noise will cover the rasp and leave the whistle sitting on top of it. In that case try pink, which reaches further up, using the buttons on the player above.
Why Earplugs Underperform Here Specifically
Earplugs are the first thing everyone tries, and against snoring they are the tool least suited to the job. This is not a criticism of earplugs, which are excellent against the sounds they are designed for. It is a frequency mismatch.
Attenuation is strongly frequency-dependent, and it is weakest at the bottom. A foam plug takes far more out of the high frequencies than the low ones — industry measurements typically put attenuation in the low bands around 15 to 25 dB against up to about 40 dB at 2 to 4 kHz (Hearing Review). Snoring is concentrated exactly where the plug does least. You end up removing the thin harmonics and keeping the rasp, which was the part keeping you awake.
There is also a hard ceiling that no earplug can pass. Sound reaches the inner ear through the bones and tissues of the head as well as through the ear canal, so blocking the canal cannot block everything. Measurements of that limit put it in the region of 40 to 60 dB across the audible range (Berger, Kieper & Gauger, 2003). A very loud snore, arriving from a metre away with nothing in its path, can be within reach of that ceiling.
And they have to stay in for eight hours. Side sleepers press a plug against the pillow, which pushes it deeper or works it loose. Many people wake with sore ear canals. This is the practical reason earplugs fail even when the acoustics are on their side.
The honest conclusion is that the combination beats either one. Earplugs take out the high end that masking would otherwise have to cover, brown noise handles the low end that gets past the plugs, and the two weaknesses do not overlap. This site sells neither, so there is no reason to claim a winner. The full comparison is here.
Setting It Up So It Actually Works
Use brown noise, and use something that can reproduce it. A phone speaker cannot move air low enough to produce the part of brown noise that covers a snore, so through a phone you will hear a hiss and conclude it failed. A speaker with a real bass driver, or a machine with some size to it, is what this needs. This is the single commonest reason the technique disappoints people.
Set the level against the peaks. Lie down, listen through several breathing cycles, and set the volume so the loudest part of the cycle stops standing out. Setting it against the average feels more reasonable and does not work — you will get through the quiet stretches and be woken by every peak.
Put the source between you and the snoring, and close to you. Distance works in your favour twice: closer to your head means a lower absolute level does the job, and it means less of the sound reaches the person beside you, who did not ask for this and is not the one with the problem.
Check it is tolerable for both of you. This is a two-person intervention in a shared room. A sound the snorer finds irritating creates a second problem where there was one, and it is worth ten minutes of negotiation while you are both awake. Brown noise is usually the easy sell here, because it reads as low and warm rather than as hiss.
Run it all night, not just at the start. Masking works by being there when the intrusion is. A sleep timer that expires at two in the morning hands the room back to the snoring at the point in the night when waking is hardest to recover from. Use a browser tab to test the sound, but understand that a tab stops the moment the phone locks — every website is subject to that, including the generator on this site. Overnight has to be an installed app or a physical machine.
The Things That Help More Than Sound Does
None of these involve installing anything, and in most households they outperform every acoustic measure on this page. It would be dishonest to leave them out.
Fall asleep first. This is the most effective single tactic there is, and it costs nothing. Getting to sleep through snoring is very hard; staying asleep through it is much easier, because the threshold for waking is far higher than the threshold for not dropping off. Going to bed twenty minutes earlier does more than any device.
Side sleeping, for the snorer. Snoring is frequently worse on the back, and positional measures are a standard first suggestion. It costs nothing to try for a week.
Consider separate rooms without treating it as a failure. A great many couples sleep better apart and stay together happily, and the reluctance is usually social rather than practical. If one person is losing sleep every night for years, that is a real health cost being 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, none of the tactics on this page are the answer — they are what you do while waiting for an appointment.
What This Will Not Do
It will not make loud snoring inaudible. Masking raises the floor so the sound stops standing out. Against a snore that is genuinely loud — one you can hear from another room — the level of masking required is high enough to be its own problem, and the honest answer is that sound alone is not going to solve it.
It will not help the person snoring. Nothing here treats snoring. It manages the experience of the person listening to it.
It will not survive your phone locking. Worth repeating because it is the commonest disappointment: a browser tab stops when the screen locks, so a web page cannot carry you through a night. That is a browser rule, not a shortcoming of one site.
It is not a diagnosis and not a treatment. If you came here because the snoring is frightening rather than annoying, that instinct is worth acting on.
If You Only Read One Paragraph
Snoring is the hardest case for masking: it arrives from a metre away with no wall in the way, it is concentrated in the low frequencies, and it rises and falls with every breath, so the masker has to cover the peaks rather than the average. Use brown noise, through a speaker that can actually reproduce low frequencies, set just above the loudest part of the cycle, placed between you and the source, running all night. Earplugs alone underperform here because they attenuate least at exactly the frequencies snoring occupies — but earplugs plus brown noise is better than either. Falling asleep first helps more than any device. And snoring with pauses, gasping or daytime sleepiness needs a doctor, not a louder masking sound.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best noise to block out snoring?
Brown noise, in most cases. The bulk of snoring energy sits low, typically below a few hundred hertz, and masking only works where the masker and the intrusion share a frequency region — so a sound with its energy stacked at the bottom is the match. White noise puts most of its energy far above the snoring, where there was never a problem. If the snore has a high whistling component as well as a low rasp, pink noise reaches further up and is worth trying.
Do earplugs work for snoring?
Less well than people expect, for a specific reason. Passive attenuation is weakest at low frequencies — roughly 15 to 25 dB in the low bands against up to about 40 dB at 2 to 4 kHz — and snoring is concentrated exactly where the plug does least. There is also a ceiling of about 40 to 60 dB imposed by sound reaching the inner ear through bone and tissue, which no earplug can pass. Earplugs combined with brown noise works better than either alone, because their weaknesses do not overlap.
How loud should the noise be to mask snoring?
Set it against the loudest part of the breathing cycle, not the average. Snoring rises and falls, and a level chosen while it is quiet will let every peak through — the peaks are what wake you. Lie down, listen through several cycles, and raise the level only until the loudest moment stops standing out. Higher than that buys 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. Brown noise carries most of its energy below a few hundred hertz, and a phone speaker cannot move enough air to reproduce that — so you hear the thin top of it and none of the part that does the masking. Use headphones to check, then a speaker with a real bass driver overnight. The second most common cause is a level set against the average snore rather than the peak. The third is a snore with a high whistling component, which brown will not cover.
When is snoring a medical problem?
When it comes with pauses in breathing, gasping or choking, or when loud snoring is paired with heavy daytime sleepiness, waking unrefreshed, or morning headaches. Those are signs of obstructive sleep apnoea, which is common, frequently undiagnosed, associated with serious health consequences, and treatable. See a doctor rather than looking for a better masking sound. A partner is usually the only person who can observe this, because the person snoring is asleep.
Can masking noise stop me hearing something important?
At a correctly set level it should not. Masking works on contrast, so a sound well above the background still gets through — the same mechanism that lets a peak in snoring wake you when the level is too low. The genuine concern on this page is different: if you succeed in not noticing the snoring, you may also stop noticing the pauses or gasping that would have prompted a medical appointment. Observe it properly once before you set about not noticing it every night.
What works better than noise for a snoring partner?
Falling asleep first, which costs nothing and outperforms every 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 interventions. Side sleeping for the snorer is a standard first suggestion and worth a week's trial. Separate rooms work for a great many couples and the reluctance is usually social rather than practical. Masking is what 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 suspend a tab as soon as the screen locks or you switch apps, which stops any sound it is producing. That is a rule enforced on 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. Running it from bedtime to morning needs an installed app or a physical sound machine.