Set up for a baby’s room
This page opens with white noise as a soft layer (30 of 100 in the mixer; the volume slider stays where you left it), the tone softened a little so the hiss is less sharp, a dark Night screen that won’t light up a room, and the sleep timer set to 45 minutes with a fade-out at the end. Press Play, set the volume, and leave the page open. Nothing is streamed: the noise is generated on your device, so it doesn’t stop if the Wi-Fi drops and there are no ads to break in.
Volume and distance
The useful facts come from a 2014 study published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (Hugh and colleagues, “Infant sleep machines and hazardous sound pressure levels”). The researchers measured 14 infant sleep machines at their maximum volume at 30, 100 and 200 cm. At 30 cm every machine was louder than 50 dBA, the limit recommended for hospital nurseries, and three machines were louder than 85 dBA, a level that exceeds adult workplace limits if it lasts more than eight hours.
A phone, a laptop or a speaker playing this page is a sound machine too, so the same points apply:
- Keep it low. Start with the volume slider low and raise it only until the noise covers the sounds you want to mask, like a TV or traffic.
- Keep it away. Sound drops quickly with distance: put the device across the room, not in or next to the cot.
- Check at the cot. A free sound level meter app, or our decibel meter, held where the baby sleeps, tells you the real level better than the slider does.
- Don’t run it all night by default. The sleep timer stops the sound after the time you choose; set it to No sleep timer only if you’ve decided you want continuous noise.
Choosing a sound
White noise has the same energy at every frequency, which makes it a bright, even hiss. Some parents prefer the softer pink noise or the deeper brown noise, or a gentle rain. Switch with the buttons above; your volume and timer stay as they are. Whatever you pick, it’s a background sound for the room, nothing more: this page doesn’t measure, monitor or track anything about your baby.
What this page plays
| Sound | Level |
|---|---|
| White noise | 30% |
Add or remove sounds and move the levels as you like. This page always opens with the mix above. The full white noise generator remembers your own mix.