What is White Noise?

Parents whose babies have sleep-related problems more and more often use special devices to help get rid of that problem: white noise machines. In my article today, I would like to clarify what white noise is and how it works.

If you prefer not to go into theoretical details but rather start shopping, go straight to choosing the best white noise machine here.

Just like white light is a combination of all visible colors of the spectrum (that is why passing through a prism or a crystal white light transforms into a rainbow), white noise is a combination of sounds of different frequencies and intensity.

Examples of white noise: the sound produced by a waterfall located nearby (distant sound of the waterfall is considered pink noise), the sound of the running water, vacuum cleaner, hairdryer or fan. White noise is a stream of repetitive, monotonous sounds that soothe babies.

Why Do Babies Love White Noise?

Babies do love white noise. Babies spend nine months in their mother’s womb surrounded by the environment filled with sounds – as if hanging around in the center of a busy street in a big city – so this noise level sounds very familiar to them. The newborn’s life outside the womb may seem uncomfortably quiet to him/her. In this case, white noise is a kind of reminder of how cozy it used to be in his “house”.

How Does White Noise Work?

On various forums, you can find different testimonies of the parents that manage to calm their babies to the sounds that might seem strange to adults. For example, the sound of a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner. Why does white noise really help to calm the baby?

White noise resembles the sound of the blood circulating in the vessels of the placenta.

“The baby hears this sound around the clock, non-stop, in the womb of the mother, which is why white noise is a powerful stimulator of the innate mechanism of self-soothing”, says Harvey Karp, a famous American pediatrician, the associate professor at the Department of Pediatrics of the Southern California Medical Institute.

Important: the sound of a hair dryer, vacuum cleaner or other similar devices does help to calm the child. But this sound can only be used for a very short period of time: for just a few minutes, and only to calm the baby. Using the sounds of this kind for an extended period of time is not recommended.

If you use white noise for a baby to make it fall asleep or during its sleep, the volume of the sound should not exceed 50 dB. This comfortable noisy background feels like the sound of the rain outside or the sound of the running water in the shower.