3 Simple Ways To Soundproof A Home Office Door

Is your home full of noise and distractions during the working day? Do you have a hard time getting work done from a room that you have converted into a home office?

It might be time for you to consider turning your workspace into a more focussed environment by soundproofing the door that leads into your home office.

This might sound a bit of a hassle to achieve, but there are some really simple steps that you can take to soundproof your home office door in no time and achieve that peace and quiet you deserve.

There are a lot of ways you can make your office door soundproof, and they all revolve around a couple of basic concepts:

1. filling in cracks/gaps that allow soundwaves to pass through
2. making the door denser
3. adding soundproofing material to the outside of the door

How to go about  soundproofing a home office door

The three most basic ways to soundproof a door are to (I) seal cracks and gaps in the door, (II) make the door denser, (III) add soundproofing material to the door.

One way to seal gaps around the door frame is to slide a door sweep under the door when it’s closed. You can also use a door gasket or gap foam to seal cracks and gaps.

Making a door denser can be achieved by applying mass loaded vinyl,  installing soundproofing panels inside the door or installing a heavier door altogether.

There are also a range of options for applying soundproofing material to the outside of the door.

You could drape a heavy soundproof blanket over the door, or you could install fiberboard as an additional layer over the door. Alternatively applying heavy foam tiles to the door is as simple as ‘peel and stick’.

Sealing the gaps helps keep the office quiet

One of the most important things that you can do to soundproof the door to your home office is to seal all of the gaps and cracks in the doorway. Sound travels further when it can pass easily through these gaps.

One way to do this is with a door gasket, with a second extremely effective option being to attach a low cost door sweep.

These devices allow you to easily open and close the door, while blocking out sound that might try to travel through the door.

Another technique that people like to use to seal cracks and gaps in their doorways is gap foam.

Although a little tricky to get a neat finish, spraying dense gap foam in the cracks and holes of your doorway will help you to stop sound from getting through. 

A denser door might be the quickest fix

Another way to make your door more soundproof is to make the door denser altogether.

A common trick is to apply heavy soundproofing panels, either physically inside of the door itself, or on either side of the door’s exterior.

Another option you can look into is replacing the entire door with a newer, heavier one. Heavy dense doors absorb and block a lot more sound than lighter wooden doors, which are typically hollow.

Yet another option you can look into is the use of fiberboard.

This is a soundproofing material that you should apply to both sides of the door to properly soundproof the room.

One of the absolute best ways to soundproof your door by making it denser but this is also one of the hardest and most complicated methods.

Filling the inside of a hollow door with a material could requires upgrading door hinges if the material used is also heavy.

With that said you’ll end up with no change to the door exterior and so the existing look of your decor will be preserved.

Try soundproofing the exterior of the door to dampen noise

Rather than messing around with a possibly complicated DIY project, you can also just add soundproofing material to the outside of the door.

A good way to do this is to use large, heavy, soundproof blankets (which are typically made of fiberglass) that you attach to the inside of the door.

Failing that, if you only need quiet for a short period of time (such as during an important Zoom call) it might be useful simply to hang a comforter over the door and jam it closed. 

Another common strategy is to apply mass loaded vinyl to either the inside or the outside of the door. Along with foam blocks and composite soundproofing material, mass loaded vinyl is one of the best options on the market for soundproofing doors.

There’s also the option to buy a pre-assembled soundproofing kit. This would give you all of the tools, materials, and instructions that you need to soundproof the door to your home office today.

Let’s seal this all up!

It can be frustrating working in a home office that feels like there is no barrier between you and the sounds of life that remain ongoing outside while you try and fail to concentrate.

You might get distracted by noise coming in from other parts of the house, and you also might not want people in other rooms to hear what you’re doing or saying in the office.

Fortunately, there’s more than a few ways to go about creating a soundproofed door for your home office.

You can use an assortment of tricks to make your door denser (and thus more soundproofed), you can use a variety of materials to seal up any cracks and gaps in the doorway that exist between the door and the frame, and you can also apply a range of different options for soundproofing materials to the inside and outside of the door.