There’s been quite a bit of buzz lately about using various colors of noise to help with sleep, and while white noise has been familiar to many, it’s the other colors of noise that are getting attention too.
All the noises you hear every day are made up of waveforms – a random mix of frequencies and amplitude. White noise contains a mixture of all the audible frequencies humans can hear playing all at the same time. It comes off as a ‘hissing’ sound and works by drowning out all the other disruptive sounds. Examples of white noise are the whirring of an air conditioner, fan or air purifier, anything that is a consistent and soothing backdrop.
There’s also pink, brown, blue, violet and gray noise. These other colors are similar to white noise, but with more energy concentrated at either the high or low end of the sound spectrum:
- Pink noise is more soothing and balanced than white noise because of its mix of high and low frequencies, which is more typical of sounds found in nature. Examples are the rustling of leaves, steady rain and wind.
- Brown (or Brownian noise) is more closely related to pink noise, but has a lower frequency and thus a deep, bassy rumble. Think of the low roar of a river or waterfall, or strong wind.
- Blue and violet noise are concentrated on the high end of the sound spectrum. They sound like a high-pitched screeching noise with no bass tones at all, and for obvious reasons aren’t considered very relaxing sounds.
- Gray noise sounds the same at every frequency, and like pink noise it sounds more balanced to the human ear, but since each human has a slightly different hearing curve there is no single example.
If all this noise is well, too noisy, there’s also one more color of noise that is officially recognized: black noise. Black is the color of silence, which is sometimes all you need to fall asleep.
You can find white, brown and pink noise sounds – and many others – by downloading the Rain Rain app.