How to Make a Music Room That Sings

If your family is a little tired of hearing you bang on the keys in the living room or perhaps they want to make space to join in, building a room specifically dedicated to music is a great use of space for nearly any project musician or musically inclined family. 

Music rooms can run the gamut of purposes and extravagance, from low-budget spare room upgrades to luxury recording studio build-outs. You can make your music room match your lifestyle and the mood of your creations. 

If you’re looking to learn more about how to make a music room that makes you want to sing from the rooftops, there are a few things worth thinking about before you hit play.

Try Going Subterranean

If you’re a little short on space, utilizing your basement can be a great option to make a home for your music creation. Whether your basement is finished or unfinished, you can still house your music room there. If you’re working with an unfinished basement, you can finish it or partially finish it, but if you don’t want to undergo a project like that, there’s no pressure. 

Basements are often mecas of unused space, and they tend to offer a lot of it. And depending on the layout of your house, your basement might be a room where sound doesn’t travel to the rest of the home quite as easily. 

Soundproofing is Your Friend

When it comes to soundproofing, the solutions are endless, and often quite creative. If your budget is on the lower end — or even if it’s not — there are steps to ensure that your room is prime for soundproofing before you even think about paneling. Using a carpeted space, finding a secluded room like a garage or basement and avoiding shared walls are all great ways to minimize sound leakage. 

When it comes to paneling, your soundproofing situation will depend on your needs. If your instrumentals are often loud and booming, you might need a more extensive soundproofing system with sealed barriers. However, if your budget doesn’t allow for that or you’re more of the acoustic type, foam paneling can do wonders. 

Don’t Cut Corners

Corners are one of the fixtures you can focus on to minimize sound travel throughout the rest of your home, and increase acoustic quality. Bare corners can create a megaphone effect of bouncing sound between walls, which can cause an echo or a fluttering sound. If you want to minimize those effects, you can pay attention to covering the corners in your design.

If you’re looking to cover up your corners, you can line them with bookshelves, utilize textiles or even place furniture in your corners to improve the acoustic quality and sound containment in your music room. 

Prioritize Your Equipment

Your music room has the benefit of being in the comfort of your own home, which means that you have access to it whenever the urge strikes. However, this could mean that you don’t have the budget or space for all the equipment your heart desires. It’s important to prioritize based on your space and your musical preferences.

Which instruments do you play most often? Is there equipment out there that can fill multiple roles in your musical endeavors? And perhaps, if you have equipment that just doesn’t fit or that you realize you haven’t been using, you can sell it and devote that space to something you’ve been yearning for. 

Know Your Purpose

One of the best ways to get the most out of your music room is to evaluate what your primary purpose will be. Is it a practice space? A recording studio? Is it a multipurpose room with many musical capabilities? Understanding what you want can help you plan your layout and equipment much more effectively.

If you’re designing a practice space for multiple people, it’s important to keep things spacious, whereas if your goal is recording, you could use a designated corner — if not a booth — for your recording equipment. When your design works with your purpose, you’ll get more use and joy out of your space.

How to Design a Music Room at Home

Your music room is about giving you a place to express yourself freely and effectively. No matter your budget, style or space, you deserve to have a music room that works with your needs, inspires you and sings to your soul.