Sleeping on a train, a plane, in a hotel
It is almost never the noise that stops you sleeping away from home: it is that the noise is unfamiliar. A familiar sound you bring with you puts a landmark back where there is none.
The problem is not the volume
An aircraft cabin sits around 75 decibels — more than a busy street — and plenty of people sleep very well in one. A silent hotel room keeps plenty of others awake. So the sound level explains very little.
What wakes you is the unexpected: a corridor, a keycard door, an announcement, the passenger next to you. In a place you do not know, the brain has not yet learnt which noises to ignore, so it assesses all of them.
A steady sound you have already heard a hundred times at home does two things at once: it masks the events, and it signals a known place. That is the one serious reason to bring your own sounds rather than rely on the room's.
On a plane
aircraft cabin, brown noiseThe cabin already produces a broad rumble. Layering a sound of the same kind on top, barely louder, absorbs announcements and trolleys without adding a second source that gets noticed.
Over-ear headphones rather than in-ear, on a long flight.
On a night train
night train, light rainThe rhythm of the rails is regular but interrupted — points, stops, doors. Light rain over the top fills the silences between stations, which is exactly when you wake.
Endless, since the whole night is the journey.
In a hotel
air conditioning, fanA hotel room is the case of silence that is too new: corridor, lift, a neighbour coming back. A soft mechanical noise imitates what the room should have had, and covers the corridor.
The phone between the bed and the door, not on the bedside table.
In an armchair, during the day
café murmurFor a short nap in a public place — a waiting room, an office, an airport lounge — a background murmur works better than a rush of air: it makes the voices around you indistinct instead of replacing them.
With a twenty-minute timer.
Offline, or useless
Flight mode, a tunnel, a hotel basement, a data allowance abroad you would rather not touch: the places where you most need a sound are exactly the ones with no network.
That is why Sleep.fm's twenty loops are installed with the app and played locally. None is downloaded on demand, none cuts out because the connection drops — and nothing leaves the phone.
The practical corollary: build the mix before you leave. A saved mix starts again with one tap, including at thirty thousand feet.
Three travel mixes
Long-haul flight
over the cabin, on headphonesNight train
for the station stopsUnfamiliar room
against the corridor and the liftIt is all already on the phone
The twenty loops install with the app: flight mode, tunnel, basement, they play. Four sounds are free, with no account to create.
See the app