Does Brown Noise Actually Help You Sleep?

Brown noise can mask a noisy room, but there's very little evidence that it improves sleep on its own, and nothing like the effect the videos promise.

The evidence for continuous noise in general is thin: a systematic review of 38 studies graded the quality of evidence for noise improving sleep as very low, with results running from better sleep to disrupted sleep [1]. Brown noise specifically has barely been tested at all. The one published study that isolates it played a different sound on each of three nights to patients in an intensive care unit and scored sleep on a four-point scale [2], which tells you very little about your bedroom.

What sound reliably does is mask. A steady track raises the noise floor of the room, so a door down the hall or a bus outside doesn't spike above it. If street noise is genuinely what wakes you, that is worth having. In a study of 10 New Yorkers whose sleep was disturbed by environmental noise, a white noise machine reduced both time awake in the night and time to fall asleep [3]. Ten people, and the work was partly funded by the maker of the machine, so hold the result loosely.

Some of the most striking pink noise findings come from something else entirely: lab systems that track your brain waves and fire precisely timed pulses [4]. An app playing a continuous track is not doing that, and shouldn't be expected to produce the same effect.

So use it if noise is your problem. Keep the volume low and set a timer rather than running it until morning. But if the room is quiet and your head is loud, sound is a comfort, not a fix. Insomnia that has lasted months is held in place by behavior and conditioned arousal, and that layer needs a program, not a playlist [5].

Full guide: The Best Sleep Apps of 2026, Compared.

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Citations

1. Riedy, S. M., Smith, M. G., Rocha, S., & Basner, M. (2021). Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 55, 101385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2020.101385 (Review of 38 studies. Following GRADE criteria, the quality of evidence for continuous noise improving sleep was very low, with findings ranging from improved to disrupted sleep.)

2. Warjri, E., Dsilva, F., Sanal, T. S., & Kumar, A. (2022). Impact of a white noise app on sleep quality among critically ill patients. Nursing in Critical Care, 27(6), 815–823. https://doi.org/10.1111/nicc.12742 (Quasi-experimental, 54 patients in a high-dependency unit where measured noise exceeded 60 dB. White noise was played on day 1, pink on day 2 and brown on day 3 through earphones, with sleep quality rated on a 4-point Likert scale; all three days differed significantly from control. The sequential, non-randomized design does not isolate brown noise.)

3. Ebben, M. R., Yan, P., & Krieger, A. C. (2021). The effects of white noise on sleep and duration in individuals living in a high noise environment in New York City. Sleep Medicine, 83, 256–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2021.03.031 (Ten participants, within-subject ABA design; significant reductions in wake after sleep onset by actigraphy and in sleep latency by diary. The work was partly funded by Marpac/Yogasleep, maker of the white noise machine used; the funding is disclosed in the conference report of this study, Sleep, 41(suppl_1), A144.)

4. Papalambros, N. A., Santostasi, G., Malkani, R. G., et al. (2017). Acoustic enhancement of sleep slow oscillations and concomitant memory improvement in older adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 109. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00109 (Pink noise pulses delivered by a phase-locked-loop algorithm at the predicted upstate of each slow wave, in 13 adults aged 60 to 84. Not the same as playing a continuous pink noise track.)

5. Edinger, J. D., Arnedt, J. T., Bertisch, S. M., et al. (2021). Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: An American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 17(2), 255–262. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986