This was an issue for me and Mrs. H when we first moved in together. I’ve slept with a fan since I was a tween+, and I can’t sleep without it. I find the silence deafening. She always slept with a radio on, but for me, my brain just anticipates the next song and I can’t fall asleep. Eventually she got used to the fan.
What about you Dopers? Are you an absolute silence kind of sleeper? A fellow fan user?
+I developed my sleep habits when I was a tween and my parents were too cheap to use the air conditioner. It was slightly cooler down in the basement so I’d sleep there, butt naked with the fan blowing on me. To this day I still sleep nekkid with a fan.
Absolute silence for me, which is easy since I’m severely hearing impaired. Once the hearing aids come out, you’d have to set off a bomb to wake me up, noise-wise.
Deliberate added noise is right out. TV or radio as background day or night: fuggeddaboutdit. That’d call for separate houses. Any ticking clock anywhere is also separate houses. A not-silent bedroom fan at night would be separate bedrooms.
But whatever ambient noise there is will probably be fine. Very noisy split-unit air conditioners in cheap hotel rooms were a bane while I was working. I can tolerate them for a night if needed, but don’t enjoy them, and would not tolerate one in my home long term.
My own space has nearly silent central HVAC, and some bit of city or nature noise, but not much. Sometimes the dishwasher, clothes washer, or dryer is still running when I go to bed. No problems with those noises. So general quiet, but sure not the absolute silence of e.g. a windless night in a desert far from civilization.
I’m fine with “safe” noises, so long as they aren’t too loud or unpredictable. Quiet snoring, crickets, routine traffic sounds, silence, all fine. I’ve fallen asleep while listening to a pod cast, and with a quiet conversation nearby, too.
When the person checking in in front of me at the hotel starts whining about being too close to the elevator or the ice machine, i volunteer to take that room. Because i really don’t care.
[There are other things i care about. I insisted on changing rooms recently because the room they put me in absolutely stank of cleaning supplies. All hotel rooms have an unpleasant odor of cleaning stuff (or really, the scent they add to it) but this was over-the-top. I don’t care much about light, either, unless it’s a really bright light shining into my eyes.]
Silence is fine, but if I can’t have it drowning out irritating sounds with “neutral” noise like a fan is useful.
I used to have an old black and white TV that I mainly used as a sleep aid by turning down the brightness to nothing and tuning it to a channel with no signal for the static white noise.
Windows open to night sounds of breezes, insects, night birds, little animals rustling, distant traffic, rare train horns.
Fans in good working order.
Absolutely no commercial TV/ or radio..
If it’s too quiet, I’ll play asmr style you tubes. Can’t be non stop waves or rain. Some quiet talking with fuzzy microphone sounds interspersed with night sounds and brief bouts of weather. Puts me right to sleep.
When I lived in Brooklyn near an industrial area I got used to trucks driving by at all hours. Now they’re working on a DC Metrorail line a block or so away, and it wakes me up when the trucks come by early. Same with the garbage/recycling pickup. The worst is when the birds start chirping away at 3:30 or 4.
When my twins were born we started using a Dohm sound machine (basically a small, fully enclosed fan) to cover the sounds of footsteps, conversations, etc to avoid waking the infants. We stayed with it, they’re 16 now, and I don’t think any of us could live without it. It’s not even that the house is that noisy, it’s just the anticipation of sound.
This isn’t a problem when we’re out somewere very remote where there’s no environmental sound whatsoever. Somehow the quietness of nature doesn’t cause that same anticipation of manmade noise, so I enjoy that quietness.
I have also tried those canned-environmental sound devices. It’s hard to get one that doesn’t loop. I realize that sounds kind of persnickety and precious, but I tried one that was rain forest sounds, and there was this frog that peeped a certain way every 5 minutes, and the predictability and anticipation was incredibly distracting.
Anyway, my best recommendation is that DOHM. Like a fan, but no wind noise or mechanical hazard. They last about 8 years or so.
I voted “predictable noise” as the best choice, but almost any of the other choices would work, too, with “unpredictable noise” being the least desirable. “Absolute silence” is fine, but definitely not a requirement.
If I want to nap during the day, “unpredictable noise” from outside can be somewhat annoying, so I have a capable “white noise” type generator with many different modes. I rarely use it, but when I do, my favourite selection is a deep drone that sounds like the inside of an old four-engine airliner.
Some 30 years ago, when I had an apartment on the other side of town, someone new moved in below me. I tried everything I could think of, even sleeping in the living room, then I remembered what I did to drown out loud snorers I had to deal with previously. Start generating my own noise!
I live very near LAX, so I got used to some noise, but a while back there was a fund available to install triple pane windows for people within a certain radius of the airport. My only “window” in my bedroom is a larger slider, and it was triple paned during this process. Ergo, I hear almost no outside noises when it’s closed. I did hear very faint booms on the Fourth, because Manhattan Beach is quite close, and they had a show.
It’s not the noise so much as the temperature thought that requires me to have a fan (our a/c died decades ago and would cost the world to replace so we didn’t – being so close to the beach it’s rarely all that hot). I’m used to the fan, though the one I have now is so quiet I barely hear even when I try to.
I put “unpredictable noise” because that’s how I DO fall asleep these days - with the tv on, or a podcast. But I don’t require it. I can fall asleep with just a fan, or the sound of my CPAP, or nothing.
Sometimes when I go back to watch what I missed the next day, I’ll see a big loud scene in the show I fell asleep to and be amazed that I slept through it. I think I’m a good sleeper!
Anything, as long as it is not discernible spoken words, in which case my brain latched onto the conversations. For most all else, my tinnitus helps keep me tuned out, it’s my own personal noise generator.
Predictable. Medivac and rapid reaction force helicopters a few hundred yds away with turbines whining all night, no problem after a couple nights.
Light I can’t handle though. I sleep with one of those blindfolds the airlines (used to?) give out on long overnight flights. My eyelids will just open which weirds some people out. They get taped shut during an operation so my eyes don’t dry out.
I’m okay with street noises, “white” noise, or no noise. I don’t think I could sleep with music, tv, or podcast playing. I am mostly bothered by noisy hotel HVAC that cycle on and off all night. If possible, I just turn it from “auto” to “on” and I’m fine. My wife likes a semi-loud fan going, and it doesn’t bother me.
Absolute silence, of course - I cannot abide people who generate unneccessary noise on purpose.
One exception, though - I very much like hearing my wife snore gently, as is her wont. Sometimes, I awake at night because she has turned to a position where her breathing is all but inaudible. I check for her actually breathing, then go back to sleep myself.