Sleeping under a flight path: earplugs, white noise and bedroom tips

This guide covers what you can do tonight, without builders: earplugs, masking sound, which room you sleep in, the window and the timing of your night. Glazing, ventilation and loft insulation are covered in soundproofing a bedroom against night flights.

What works, in brief

Earplugs: the best-tested option

The most direct test so far was published in 2026 by Mathias Basner and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty-five healthy adults, 28 years old on average, spent seven nights in a sleep laboratory. On noise nights they heard 93 events, from jets, helicopters, drones, a low sonic boom, road and rail traffic and two alarm sounds, peaking at 45, 55 or 65 dB in the bedroom.

With standard foam earplugs, their sleep was barely different from a quiet night. The earplugs won back more than 70% of the deep sleep that the noise had taken away, and only started to fail at the loudest level, 65 dB. For comparison, in a field study near 56 US airports, peaks that loud were the top 1% of those measured in people's bedrooms. Most participants found the earplugs comfortable, and six in seven said they slept better with them.

Two findings from that study matter in practice:

• Fit makes a huge difference. The same foam earplugs cut noise by 25.5 dB on average, but by anything from 11 to 42 dB depending on the person. Rolling, inserting and sizing them properly probably matters more than which brand you buy.
• The study had limits. It was small, short and done with young, healthy people, and its authors say longer studies are needed. Research on earplugs in hospitals is more mixed: a Cochrane review of intensive care studies found low-quality evidence that earplugs or eye masks may lengthen sleep, and other reviews found no convincing benefit.

Hearing protection also makes warning sounds harder to hear. Think about how you would hear a smoke alarm or a child in the night before you rely on earplugs every night.

How to read SNR and NRR ratings

Earplugs that meet the European standard for hearing protectors, EN 352, come with an SNR (single number rating) from laboratory tests. Packs also give H, M and L values, the protection against high-, medium- and low-pitched noise, and a table of protection at each frequency, because how much an earplug blocks depends on the pitch of the sound. In the worked example in the Health and Safety Executive's guidance, a protector blocks about 12 dB of a low hum at 125 Hz but about 40 dB at 4,000 Hz, and is rated H 27, M 19, L 13 and SNR 22. The HSE notes that single-number ratings are less reliable when the noise is dominated by low tones, and suggests allowing 4 dB less protection than the label for real-world fit.

In the US, earplugs carry an NRR (noise reduction rating) under the Environmental Protection Agency's labelling rules. It is also measured in a laboratory, and OSHA, the workplace safety regulator, says it usually overstates the protection people get. Its rule of thumb for estimating real protection at work subtracts 7 dB and then halves the result, so an NRR of 33 becomes about 13 dB. The two ratings are measured differently, so do not compare an SNR with an NRR directly.

What this means under a flight path: if the planes you hear in bed are mostly a low rumble, the L value tells you more than the headline number. But the Basner study suggests that ordinary foam earplugs, worn well, are enough for all but the loudest events, so a comfortable pair you keep in until morning beats a higher rating you take out at 2 a.m.

White noise and pink noise

Many people use a fan, an app or a machine to drown out planes. The evidence for it is weak. A 2021 systematic review of 38 studies found results ranging from better sleep to worse, and rated the evidence that continuous noise improves sleep as very low quality. It warned that it may also harm sleep and hearing.

The 2026 trial tested pink noise directly. Played all night at 50 dB on its own, it reduced REM sleep, the stage of sleep linked to memory and mood. Played alongside the traffic noise, it slightly reduced the disruption from each event, but overall it made sleep worse. Compared with a quiet night, nights with both had less sleep in total and more time awake, which neither the traffic noise nor the pink noise caused on its own. A companion paper found that pink noise did reduce awakenings from aircraft noise the louder it was, but earplugs did better. The authors caution against using broadband noise widely, especially for babies and toddlers, until more is known.

There are two further drawbacks. Masking noise also hides the sounds you want to hear, such as a fire alarm or a crying baby, and some white noise machines have been measured above the noise limits used in workplaces. If you already use one and sleep well with it, the research has not yet settled the best level or kind of sound.

Choosing the quietest bedroom

Noise gets into a house through windows, doors, walls, the roof and gaps, and in the FAA's insulation guidance windows and doors are usually the main things to treat. That gives you a few free things to try:

• Pick the room whose windows face away from the flight path. If planes pass to one side of the house, the rest of the house stands between them and a bedroom on the far side.
• Mind the roof. When planes pass overhead, sound also comes through the roof, so a room directly under a thin roof, such as a loft conversion, may be no quieter than one facing the planes. Heathrow's insulation scheme, for example, includes loft and ceiling insulation.
• Move the bed away from the window. Nobody has measured how much this helps, but it costs nothing to try.
• Test it at the right time. Compare rooms while the first arrivals are coming in, not in the middle of the afternoon.

Older people, children, shift workers and people with sleep disorders are thought to be more easily disturbed by noise at night, so they may be the ones to give the quietest room.

Windows and ventilation at night

The window is usually the biggest single decision. The WHO estimates that outdoor noise is about 10 dB lower indoors with the window open, 15 dB lower with it tilted or half open, and 25 dB lower with it closed. So a plane that peaks at 70 dB outside peaks at about 60 dB in a bedroom with the window open, and about 45 dB with it closed. Researchers see the first noise-related awakenings once peaks in the bedroom pass 30 to 35 dB.

Even so, most people near airports sleep with the window open in summer. In the UK's ANNE survey of more than 4,000 people near eight airports, 78% slept with the window partly or fully open in warmer months, and 28% said aircraft noise got in the way of sleeping with it open.

If you need the air and your airport has a quiet period, use it: open the window when the last flights have gone and close it before the first arrivals. For ways to stay cool with the windows shut, see summer under a flight path.

Timing: know your airport's night

Airports have very different nights. Heathrow schedules no departures between 23:00 and 06:00, and early arrivals may not land before 04:30. About 80% of its night flights land between 04:30 and 06:00, around 16 a day, and it rotates which runway takes them over a four-week cycle, so a street may get the early arrivals only some weeks. Frankfurt has banned planned flights between 23:00 and 05:00 since 2011. Some airports, especially cargo hubs, fly through the night. What time do planes start and stop flying? and the Heathrow page have the details.

Timing affects sleep. The NORAH study measured the sleep of more than 200 people near Frankfurt. After the night ban, they woke less often than the year before. But people who went to bed later, and so were still asleep when flights resumed at 05:00, woke more often, even though their deep sleep was similar.

Whether those early planes come over your house also depends on the wind. Planes land into the wind, so with a westerly wind they approach from the east, and with an easterly wind from the west.

So one week the first arrivals may pass over your roof and the next they may not. Replay a few recorded nights in each direction on our free flight map and note when the first plane crosses your street.

When these are not enough

If earplugs, the right room and a closed window still leave you waking, the next steps are building work: secondary or acoustic glazing, ventilation that lets you keep the window shut, and loft insulation. Some airports pay for this work in their loudest areas. The options, and what each one achieves, are covered in soundproofing a bedroom against night flights.