How to Isolate a Kitchen Counter, Reduce Impact Noise

Insulating kitchen units and sinks
Kitchens can potentially cause more impact noise at next-door neighbours than you might expect. When the kitchen counter is placed against the wall you share with neighbours every kitchen appliance can sound like a drill in the neighbours house, and every cup placed on the counter as a dull thump. Some examples of an improperly installed kitchen are: Worktop milled into the partition wall, kitchen unit right on the floor and rigid against the partition wall that divides your own home from your neighbours home, pipes milled in the partition wall, and a steel sink which is not dampened. By preventing these kinds of things you create a lot less impact noise to the neighbours. We have the following solutions for you:

How to insulate impact noise kitchen counter
Place the kitchen unit or counter on pieces of purple Regufoam D220, 12 mm thick. Cut pieces of approximately 120 x 120 mm, from one sheet, and place a just as large piece of plywood between the feet of the counter and the Regufoam in order to distribute weight. This way you reduce the amount of vibration that is transferred from the kitchen unit to the floor. Regufoam is relatively soft, be careful with water pipes so they won't leak after a while because of play on the pipes.

How to insulate a steel sink
Most steel sinks are already provided with a black layer of material underneath, this material is called 'anti-drumming'. Without anti-drumming, washing the dishes would sound as if you were putting the dishes in a washing machine, even the clatter of water in the sink would make lots of noise. In some cases the insulation of steel sinks can be improved with Vibraflex Normal anti-drumming.

Soundproofing against noisy neighbours
More about soundproofing ceiling or wall, against neighbour noise, can be found on our "Neighbour Noise Page".

Better acoustics in the kitchen
For the improvement of the acoustics in the kitchen we have a nice tips page with an example 'how to improve room acoustics'.

Products to insulate a kitchen counter

Soundproofing in the Kitchen