Home / Guides / Does white noise help you sleep?
Does white noise help you sleep?
Updated 22 October 2026
Short answer: it helps some people, mostly those who sleep in noisy places, and the research behind it is weaker than its popularity suggests. White noise does not make you sleepy. What it does is make sudden noises less likely to wake you.
Press play
Play opens the sound masker with this mix already loaded, so you can hear it and shape it.
How to set it up
- If you want to try it, start with a soft sound like Soft white noise or Brown noise for sleep.
- Keep it quiet and across the room.
- Give it a week. Your brain needs a few nights to learn to ignore it.
What the research shows
A 2021 systematic review of noise as a sleep aid found the evidence to be of low quality: small studies, different methods, and mixed results. Some studies, especially in hospitals and noisy homes, found people woke less and fell asleep faster with continuous noise. Others found no benefit.
How it works
You wake to a sound when it stands out from the background. White noise raises the background, so a slammed door or a passing car is a smaller jump. That is why it helps most where there is noise to cover.
When white noise does not help
In a quiet room, it adds sound where there was none. If you sleep well already, there is no reason to add it. It also will not fix insomnia that comes from stress, pain, or a sleep disorder.
Questions
Does white noise help you fall asleep faster?
Some studies found it did, mostly in noisy settings.
Should I use white noise every night?
If it helps and is kept quiet, there is no known harm for adults.