Carpet offers excellent sound insulation

Carpet muffles loud sounds and creates a more peaceful indoor environment. When there is no carpet in the room, sound travels much further. You have probably been in a room without carpet and noticed that sound tends to bounce off the walls and create an echo in the room. This is due to the fact that hard surfaces cannot absorb sound in the same way that soft surfaces, such as wall-to-wall carpets can. Carpet contributes to a much quieter environment. Along with adding heat insulation and comfort.

The only way to eliminate excessive noise generated by floor impacts, such as footfalls, objects dropped on the floor, a loud conversation in the living room, or watching your favorite tv show in your TV room or by enjoying a movie in your home theatre room is to install carpet and carpet underpad/carpet cushion. This is especially important in homes where children running and jumping can cause heavy floor impacts, increasing ambient noise levels significantly.

Carpet and underlay also help to control sound reverberation, which is the amount of time sound stays in a room. Reverberant homes are generally noisy and ‘echoey’ places where speech communication is difficult, particularly over the phone.

The installation of carpet and underlay reduces long reverberation times to acceptable levels.

Controlling Reverberation

Carpet’s pile structure also aids in reverberation control. The ability of a material to control reverberation is measured by its Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) and/or its Weighted Sound Reduction Coefficient, w (pronounced ‘alpha w’). A typical broadloom carpet has an NRC of 0.35 and absorbs 35% of the sound that strikes it. Carpet has an NRC rating that is directly proportional to its thickness. When the carpet is installed with an underlay, its NRC rating nearly doubles.