The soundproofing market is filled with products promising to relieve you of the annoying noises that keep you up at night with little or no investment. The unfortunate reality is that while there are some cheap products that might make a difference in your soundproofing efforts, most solutions are going to require some level of skill, and a lot of work. If you are planning on soundproofing a room, just set your expectations at a realistic level. Cheap materials lead to cheap results. But, there are some great values to be had in soundproofing.
When given the choice of adding mass or isolation to a wall, by far the easiest way of soundproofing a room cheap is to add extra mass. This is most commonly done by screwing the new drywall up. However, with new products like sound barrier glue, you can attach the new drywall effortlessly on the wall and introduce a sound barrier layer that actually compounds the effect by adding a little isolation between the studs. Without the need to tear out your old drywall, you can expect to spend a few hundred dollars on materials depending on the size of your wall. The only downside of this method is that you miss the opportunity to install energy saving products in the wall, like foam pipe insulation.
If a few hundred dollars is out of your price range, there isn’t much hope for your soundproofing concerns. But, there are a few temporary solutions that may provide some relief. For example, sound blankets can be purchased for about $40 dollars and claim to reduce sound up to 20dB. However their appearance is very obviously temporary and there are no guarantees that they work.
The end result of a soundproofing job is to get the STC rating of the wall of 50. With the average household wall being around 36STC, the 15STC boost claimed by sound barrier glue should do the trick for most homeowners.