This Common Natural Sleep Aid Could Be Making Things Worse

New research suggests sleeping in silence is best.

February 2, 2026

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Up to half of American adults flip on ambient noise to fall asleep at night. That love of soothing bedtime noise has spawned machines and apps that deliver specific sounds and frequencies like nature sounds, white noise, pink noise, and brown noise to help people really dial into an ambiance that feels the most relaxing at bedtime. But new research finds that pink noise can actually make sleep quality worse—and it has implications for fans of all soothing sleep sounds.

“I have been studying the effects of traffic noise on sleep for the past 25 years, and was astonished to learn that millions of people use noise machines or playback broadband sounds like ocean sounds while sleeping,” Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, lead study author and professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, tells SELF. But Dr. Basner says he could find “no good evidence for or against” using these tools, so he decided to do his own sleep study.

Pink noise has emerged as a “natural-sounding” alternative to white noise, with plenty of people claiming it’s a better way to wind down for bed and sleep more deeply. Dr. Basner’s research specifically focused on pink noise—and he found pink noise isn’t doing listeners any favors in terms of sleep quality.

If you love listening to pink noise (or any soothing sounds) at bedtime, sleep medicine doctors say you don’t need to abandon them completely. But the findings do suggest you may want to rethink your habit. Here’s why.

The study looked at the impact of several types of noise on sleep.

For the study, which was published in the journal Sleep, researchers followed 25 healthy adults between the ages of 21 to 41 in a sleep lab for eight hours over seven nights in a row. The participants didn’t have any sleep disorders and said they didn’t use noise in the past to help them sleep.

The participants were exposed to different noises while they slept, including aircraft noise, pink noise, aircraft noise with pink noise, and aircraft noise with earplugs. In case you’re fuzzy on the details, pink noise is a broadband noise that sounds uniform and static. It’s often considered more soothing and balanced than white noise.

Every morning, participants were asked to complete tests and surveys to measure their sleep quality, alertness, and other health impacts.

The researchers found that exposure to aircraft noise (compared to no noise) was linked with about 23 less minutes a night spent in stage N3, the deepest phase of sleep. But wearing earbuds prevented this drop in deep sleep. Listening to pink noise alone at 50 decibels—which the researchers compared to the same level as a “moderate rainfall”—was linked to about a 19-minute drop in REM sleep, a form of deep sleep that’s important for emotional regulation, motor skills, and brain development.

When pink noise was combined with aircraft noise, deep sleep and REM sleep were significantly shorter compared to nights when people slept with no noise. Participants also spent 15 more minutes awake when these sounds were combined vs. when they only were exposed to aircraft noise or pink noise.

The participants also said that they felt that they slept lighter, woke up more often, and had worse overall sleep quality when they were exposed to aircraft noise or pink noise compared to nights with no noise, unless they used earplugs.

This isn’t the first study to link pink noise to worse sleep. Research published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in 2023 found that pink noise limited the amount of time people spent in N1 (the earliest stage of sleep, which is considered the “creative sweetspot”), suggesting that it may be “detrimental” to creativity and insight.

There are a few reasons why pink noise isn’t great for sleep.

It’s important to point out that pink noise was played at 50 decibels in this study, which isn’t quiet. Dr. Basner says it’s possible that may have interfered with sleep quality, but he also notes that participants had disrupted REM sleep at 40 decibels. “Also, 50 decibels is not loud in the sense that some of the sound machines can easily generate 80 decibels, which would be perceived as eight times as loud compared to 50 decibels,” he says.

Still, there are likely other reasons behind pink noise’s link to disrupted sleep. While the researchers didn’t dive into that, Dr. Basner says pink noise “likely interacts with structures deep in the brain that are responsible for initiating and maintaining REM sleep.”

Any kind of sound during REM sleep has been shown to decrease how long you stay in REM sleep, Praveen Rudraraju, MD, medical director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Northwell’s Northern Westchester and Phelps hospitals, tells SELF. However, he points out that factors like the type of noise, level of noise, and how long it lasts can play a role in how disruptive it ends up being. Meaning, it’s not shocking that people had the hardest time sleeping when they were exposed to aircraft noise.

The findings also have implications for other sleep sounds.

It’s easy to feel a little smug if you’re a diehard fan of white noise or ocean waves over the trendier pink noise. But doctors say these findings likely apply to all ambient sounds during sleep.

“White noise, pink noise…I don’t think that one is more dangerous than the other,” says W. Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the Sleep Unplugged podcast. “Silence is still best.”

Dr. Basner agrees. “It is likely that other types of broadband noise like white noise or brown noise have similar effects, but additional studies are needed to show this more conclusively,” he says.

But, of course, everyone is different. “Individuals are affected differently by noise, as responses vary from person to person,” Dr. Rudraraju says. “Some people require a quiet environment, and even minimal noise can disrupt their sleep quality. Others report benefits [of ambient noise], which may vary based on age group, clinical setting, and the specific characteristics of the noise.”

Doctors recommend skipping ambient noise, if you can.

“If you can do without it, do without it,” Dr. Winter says. “There’s nothing wrong with silence.” But there are a few caveats here. If you’re trying to sleep in a noisy place or your partner isn’t the quietest sleeper, Dr. Winter says that ambient noise may be helpful for sleep.

“I use it myself sometimes,” he says. “It’s a nice way to condition the environment into something more neutral and drown out something that may be more distracting to your sleep.” Meaning, if you’re faced with trying to sleep through road noise or pink noise, the latter is likely your best bet. “Just try not to make it a dependency,” Dr. Winter says.

Dr. Rudraraju recommends checking in with yourself after you use ambient noise during sleep. “If someone is using pink, white, or brown noise, they should ask themselves whether they feel rested upon awakening,” he says. “If they do feel rested, the noise is unlikely to be causing significant sleep disruption. However, for those who do not feel rested, the noise may be reducing REM sleep and contributing to disrupted sleep.”

And, if you feel like you sleep better with ambient noise, Dr. Basner recommends listening to it at the lowest sound level that still works for you. “If you only use it to help you fall asleep, use a timer that automatically turns the sounds off after 30 minutes or so,” he says.