Does White Noise Help You Sleep? What Studies Show
Does white noise help you sleep? A 2021 review of 38 articles, one lab trial and a Cochrane review on music, and what studies leave open on racing thoughts.
Ayse Tara, BSc in Nursing
10/22/20266 min read
White noise, rain, ocean waves, a fan, a playlist, a dimmed video: sleep sounds is a wide shelf, and the research covers only part of it. This article takes three of its sections, continuous noise, music and videos, and reads what the studies found on each.
Does white noise help you sleep? A 2021 review of 38 articles found results ranging from better sleep to worse, rated the evidence “very low” in quality, and a small lab trial found people fell asleep sooner with sound on. Below, each study's design, size and limits, plus two questions with no direct study behind them.
Key takeaways
Hypnagogia-Pass is not a sound recording: it is our method for the moment you lie down, 30 videos, more than 2,400 minutes in total, a word and a matching picture on a dark screen, no talking, soft background sound. It is something to try, not a treatment.
A 2021 systematic review of 38 articles on continuous noise and sleep found results from improved to disrupted sleep and graded the quality of the evidence “very low.”
In a 2017 lab trial of 18 healthy adults, falling asleep took a median of 13 minutes with broadband sound and 19 without, in a setting built to mimic a bad night.
We found no study of white noise for racing thoughts or for anxiety at bedtime, and none on watching videos to fall asleep.
What counts as a sleep sound?
In the studies below, three different things share the label. Continuous noise means a steady, even sound such as white, pink or broadband noise. Music means pieces chosen to relax, usually slow and without lyrics. A sleep video adds a picture, and it is the least studied of the three.
They are not interchangeable. A study of one says little about the others, which is why we keep them apart. Our guide to what hypnagogia is covers the drifting stretch before sleep, a state you pass through; a sound is something played into it.
White noise: a review and a small lab trial
The broadest look is a 2021 systematic review in Sleep Medicine Reviews by Riedy and colleagues. It gathered 38 articles on continuous noise and sleep. The studies were varied in design, and their findings ranged from sleep that improved to sleep that was disrupted. The authors graded the quality of the evidence as very low, noted that this sits at odds with how widely noise is used, and called for more objective research. They also raised the possibility that noise could harm sleep and hearing.
The best-known positive result is a 2017 trial in Frontiers in Neurology by Messineo and colleagues. Eighteen healthy adults slept in a lab on two nights in a randomized crossover design, with lights out 90 minutes early to imitate a night of trouble falling asleep. With broadband sound at 46 decibels instead of a 40-decibel night, the median time to fall asleep was 13 minutes against 19, a median reduction of 38%. Those who reported trouble falling asleep also rated their sleep quality higher.
The catch is the size and the setting: 18 healthy people, two nights, an induced sleeplessness rather than a lasting problem. Our reasoning, not a study result: a small trial that points one way and a large review that calls the whole field weak can both be right, because the first measures one sound in one setting and the second covers many sounds in many settings.
Sleep music: what a Cochrane review and a student trial found
A 2022 Cochrane review by Jespersen and colleagues looked at music for insomnia in adults: 13 studies with 1,007 participants. On the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, where lower scores mean better sleep, music lowered scores by 2.79 points on average across 10 studies (moderate certainty). For insomnia severity, two studies of 63 people showed no clear difference (very low certainty). All the studies carried a high risk of performance bias, which is common when listeners know they are getting music.
A smaller example is a 2024 study in Sleep Medicine of 75 students aged 18 to 30, who were given classical music, jazz or a control for five weeks, alongside breathing and relaxation. Both music groups improved on insomnia severity and sleep quality compared with the control, and neither genre beat the other. Depression and anxiety scores improved in the music groups, but also in the control group. Our cognitive shuffling article covers a technique that uses no sound at all.
Sleep videos, racing thoughts and anxiety: what we could not find
We found no study of watching a video to fall asleep. The nearest research looked at ASMR clips and mood, not sleep, so we do not draw on it here. For racing thoughts, the closest is a 2001 experiment in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology: 40 female students tried to suppress a thought while loud white noise played at 90 decibels or a quieter 50. Loud noise did not increase intrusive thoughts, but students with more obsessive-compulsive symptoms had more intrusions at the lower noise level. It was a daytime thought-suppression task, not a bedtime study.
For anxiety, we found no trial of white noise for adults at bedtime. That gap matters, because a sound can change what you hear but cannot answer why thoughts speed up once the lights go out. That question has its own research. If it is the one that fits your nights, we read it from three angles: how to stop overthinking before sleep looks at what studies suggest about the habit itself, how to stop racing thoughts at night at the moment the thoughts begin to speed up, and why the mind races at night at what studies show about the cause. Each also says what the research leaves open.
Something to try tonight: what is Hypnagogia-Pass?
A sound asks your ears to crowd out thoughts. Hypnagogia-Pass gives the mind something else to do. Hypnagogia is the drifting, half-lit stretch between waking and sleep, and Hypnagogia-Pass is our library of 30 videos, more than 2,400 minutes in total, curated by CantSwitchOff to walk you through the hypnagogic pass. Each session shows a word, then a matching picture, one after another on a dark screen, with no talking and soft background sound.
Our reasoning, not a study result: every word and picture is chosen to be unrelated to the one before it, so the mind has nothing to link two in a row and can keep drifting, which a steady sound does not try to do. It is a method, not a treatment, inspired by published research on imagery before sleep that did not examine our videos. Why we built it tells the story, and our introduction to the method explains how it differs from cognitive shuffling. Try Hypnagogia-Pass tonight.
Your sleep sounds questions, answered
Does white noise help you sleep?
The evidence is mixed. A 2021 review of 38 articles found results from improved to disrupted sleep and rated the evidence very low in quality. A 2017 lab trial of 18 healthy adults found people fell asleep in a median of 13 minutes with broadband sound against 19 without. That trial was small and short, so it shows a possibility, not a general rule.
Is it bad to sleep with white noise?
We found no study showing harm in everyday use, but the 2021 review raised the possibility that continuous noise could affect sleep and hearing. Most studies were short, so long-term effects are unknown. The review gave no safe volume or number of nights, and we do not either.
Is it better to sleep with silence or white noise?
No study we found settles this for the general reader. The 2021 review found both better and worse sleep with noise, on very low quality evidence. A 2017 lab trial saw faster sleep onset with broadband sound than with a 40-decibel night, in 18 healthy adults. Your own bedroom may differ.
What kind of noise stops racing thoughts?
We found no study of noise and racing thoughts at bedtime, so the direct answer is unknown. The closest is a 2001 experiment in which 40 students tried to suppress a thought during loud white noise; the noise did not raise intrusive thoughts. That was a daytime task, not sleep.
Does white noise reduce anxiety?
We found no study of white noise for anxiety in adults at bedtime, so the direct answer is unknown. In a 2024 music trial of 75 students, anxiety fell in the music groups and in the control group too. For how common anxious nights are, see what sleep anxiety surveys show.
Know someone who's awake right now?
If you have a friend who plays rain sounds or a fan every night, or someone you think needs this information, send them this article. It brings them what the studies found, in plain words. If you are awake yourself, this short post has a gentle thing to try.
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If trouble sleeping lasts for weeks, or if it comes with other symptoms that worry you, please talk with a doctor. This article is general information, not medical advice, and Hypnagogia-Pass has not been tested in a clinical trial.