Halloween is just around the corner. If you’re crazy about Halloween and want to live in a haunted house, then having heavy footsteps on your hardwood floors echo through the house is exactly what you would expect and want. There’s nothing spookier than hearing the slow, cluncking, echoing footsteps of a zombie, witch, or peg legged monster coming towards the front door. If you’re not looking to live in a haunted house, then here’s how you put a stop to spooky echoes in our home.
Any textile will help eliminate the echo in your home
If your hardwood floors are being a little too loud here are a few great ways to turn down the echo.
- Hang some paintings or wall decorations. Any textile is great. Of course, you want them also to add to the tone and personality of your home, but hanging textiles on opposite walls will act as mittens catching the sound that just bounced from your floors. Quick side note: oil paintings can sometimes act as a hard surface due to the hardening of the oil paint, so a large oil painting in an echoey room may just add to the problem. The same goes for that piece of wood art that you created with the leftover scraps from your floors.
- Books are also great diffusers. You want to try to use as many types of textile materials around your walls to break up the movement of the sound and block the back and forth effect. Use different shapes and sizes so that the sound has to bend and twist to get round the room, losing steam at every turn and silencing the echo.
- Place area rugs to block the sound before it even begins.
- Create a “no shoe” policy.
A home that echoes can feel clinical and cold
Photo: white oak hardwood floors in Clyfford Still Museum, by T&G Flooring
You want your home to be a place where you can walk down the hall quietly and have a peaceful conversation without having it parroted back to you by your floors, walls, and ceilings. A shoe hitting wood will always make a bit of noise, but you can tone it down a little so that your home doesn’t feel clinical or like you are tip-toeing around a museum. Footsteps, voices and other noises ricocheting back and forth are also going to make you crazy after a while. Again, great if you want to live your life like an episode of American Horror Story, not so great if you just want a harmonious home.
