Brown Noise

Guide for night workers

Sleeping during the day after a night shift

Nurses, police, drivers, factory and warehouse workers: when you sleep while the world is awake, noise is the problem. Here's how steady sound can cover it, and a simple day-sleep setup.

Why day sleep is so noisy

When you get home from a night shift, everyone else is starting their day. Traffic, deliveries, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, the doorbell, the neighbor's renovation, kids home from school. The World Health Organization recognizes night-time traffic noise as a threat to sleep (WHO, 2018). For day sleepers, the same traffic is at its loudest.

And it's not just how loud things are. It's how sudden. A car door, a dog bark or a delivery driver knocking makes a jump from quiet to loud, and that jump is what wakes you.

How steady sound helps

A steady sound in the room makes those jumps smaller. In a small sleep lab study, adding steady noise to recorded hospital sounds brought the number of brief wake-ups back close to normal (Sleep Medicine, 2005). Brown noise is a good fit for daytime sounds because most of them (traffic, engines, mowers, washing machines) are low rumbles, and brown noise puts its energy in the same low range.

“I can sleep throughout the day with no disturbances”

A night-shift nurse, in a YouTube comment on a brown noise video. About brown noise in general, not about our app.

Honest note: no study has tested noise colors for shift workers sleeping by day yet. This is what many day sleepers say works for them, plus what sound does to sudden noises. See the research page.

A simple day-sleep setup

  1. Make it dark. Blackout curtains, foil on the window, or a sleep mask. Daylight is the other half of the problem.
  2. Make it cool. A cooler room is easier to sleep in, and a fan adds a little steady sound too.
  3. Start brown noise before you lie down. Keep it soft: just loud enough that the street sinks into the background. Put the phone on the nightstand or across the room, not by your ear.
  4. Let it play the whole time you sleep. Daytime noise comes at any hour, so a 30-minute timer won't cover the mower at noon. Use no timer, or the 8-hour timer, which is free in the app.
  5. Silence your phone, with exceptions. Do Not Disturb stops calls and alerts but lets sound keep playing. Most phones let you allow calls from family or work through.
  6. Tell the house. A sign on the bedroom door. The doorbell off, or a note for deliveries.
  7. Keep the same routine. Same wind-down after every shift: home, eat something light, dark room, same sound. The routine does a lot of the work.

Which color for day sleep?

Brown for traffic, engines, mowers and building work. If the problem is voices or a TV in the next room, slide a little toward pink, since speech sits higher than engine rumble. You can hear the difference on our free web player in a few seconds.

Common questions

Does the app stop after an hour?

No. There's no time limit, free or paid. It plays until you stop it or the timer ends, with the screen locked.

Can I use earplugs too?

Yes, and many people combine them. In a 2026 lab study, foam earplugs blocked aircraft noise better than pink noise did (Sleep, 2026). Use whatever works for you, together or apart.

Will an ad wake me up?

No. Brown Noise has no ads at all.