When White Noise Keeps You Awake

The default sleep advice, its thin evidence, and gentler options

"Try white noise" is probably the most common answer to "I can't sleep". It is cheap, it is in every sleep app, and for many people it does help mask a noisy street. For some autistic adults it does the opposite: the hiss itself becomes the sound they cannot stop hearing. If that is you, there is nothing wrong with how you are using it.

The evidence is weaker than its popularity

A systematic review of 38 studies on continuous noise as a sleep aid rated the quality of the evidence as very low. Results ranged from better sleep to worse sleep. White noise is widely recommended, but it has never been shown to work reliably, and none of those studies looked at autistic adults.

The National Autistic Society's sleep guide for autistic adults lists white noise among the things that may keep you awake, alongside other sensory triggers in the bedroom.

Why it can backfire with sensitive hearing

About 4 in 10 autistic people have hyperacusis, discomfort at volumes most people find ordinary. That figure comes from a meta-analysis that included mostly children. A 2024 doctoral study of 936 adults found similar rates in autistic adults: 40.2% with hyperacusis and 35.5% with misophonia, a strong reaction to specific sounds.

White noise carries the same energy at every frequency, so it sounds bright and hissy: much of what you hear is in the high range. That is the range a sensitive ear tends to object to first.

For children there is a direct test: in a hospital study of autistic children and teenagers aged 7 to 17, 9 of the 21 without an intellectual disability would not tolerate white noise at all. No comparable study exists in adults, so treat that as a hint, not a number that applies to you.

Gentler options

• Pink noise. It has less energy in the high frequencies than white noise, which is why audiology practice for hyperacusis generally prefers it.
• Brown noise and deep, muffled noise. Even darker: mostly low rumble, almost no hiss.
• Nature sounds. In a 2024 study, 19 autistic adults rated different ways of masking noise. Nature sounds such as water and rain came out ahead of white, brown and other coloured noise. The study was about noise sensitivity in general, not sleep.
• Turning the high tones down. Sound therapy for hyperacusis sometimes filters out everything above about 5 kHz. The app's Soft sound switch does the same to every sound it plays, and fades in over two seconds.
• Nothing at all. For some people silence is the answer. That is a valid result, not a failure.

How to test a sound without ruining a night

1. Test in the daytime. Bedtime is the worst moment to find out a sound is unbearable.
2. Use your night-time volume. Set the phone to the level you use in the evening, so the test sounds the way the night will.
3. One sound at a time, quietly. Listen for a while and notice how it feels before you decide.
4. Keep what passed. In the evening, play only the sounds you were comfortable with.

The app's Sound check does exactly this: six sounds, one at a time, at your evening volume. You mark the ones you can listen to, and up to three are saved with the music and a Sleep Timer as Custom 1. If none suits you, it suggests Music Only or Silence Only.