I'm setting up a home office in my Westboro house and need to block family noise during calls, what should I do?

Working from home in Westboro is increasingly common, and the good news is that blocking conversational noise for video calls is one of the more achievable soundproofing goals — you do not need to build a recording studio to get meaningful results.

Understanding What You Are Actually Fighting

The noise you are dealing with — kids playing, TV in the next room, family conversations — is airborne noise, meaning sound waves travelling through the air and then through your walls, door, and floor. The goal is to raise your room's STC (Sound Transmission Class) rating enough that voices on the other side of the wall become unintelligible rather than clearly audible. For a functional home office, targeting STC 45 to 50 is usually sufficient. A standard Westboro house wall with a hollow-core door and no acoustic treatment might be performing at STC 28 to 35 right now, so there is real room for improvement.

The single most important thing to understand is that sound finds the weakest path. Your wall might be perfectly insulated, but if your door has a gap underneath it and hollow-core construction, most of the noise is coming through the door — not the wall. Always address the weakest link first.

Start with the door, because it is almost always the biggest problem. A hollow-core interior door has almost no mass and typically has air gaps on all four sides. Replacing it with a solid-core door (around $200 to $400 for the door slab alone) makes an immediate and dramatic difference. Add an automatic door bottom sweep ($40 to $80) that drops a seal when the door closes, and apply acoustic door seal tape or compression weatherstripping around the three remaining sides. This one upgrade can improve your STC by 8 to 12 points and is something a handy homeowner can tackle themselves.

Next, look at your walls. If your office shares a wall with a loud living room or playroom, a professional soundproofing upgrade using resilient channel or sound isolation clips, Roxul Safe'n'Sound mineral wool insulation, and double 5/8-inch Type X drywall with Green Glue Noiseproofing Compound between the layers will get you to STC 50 to 55. For a typical 10x8 foot wall in a Westboro semi-detached or detached home, expect to pay $2,000 to $4,000 installed. This is professional work — improper resilient channel installation is the most common failure point, and a single short-circuited screw defeats the entire decoupling system.

Do not forget electrical outlets on shared walls — these are significant sound leak points. A professional will install acoustic putty pads around each box and seal penetrations with acoustic caulk (around $8 to $15 per tube for products like Tremco).

From an Ottawa climate perspective, if your home office is on an exterior wall, make sure any soundproofing assembly includes proper vapour barrier placement on the warm side of the insulation. Westboro homes — especially the older stock near the main strip — often have quirky wall assemblies that require a careful look before adding layers.

For a quicker and lower-cost interim solution while you plan a proper upgrade, heavy acoustic curtains on the wall (not just the window), a thick area rug, and positioning your microphone closer to your mouth while using noise-cancelling headphones can meaningfully reduce how much family noise bleeds into your calls.

For a project like this, it is worth having an experienced soundproofing contractor walk through your office space and identify where sound is actually entering — the answer sometimes surprises people. You can find soundproofing professionals serving the Westboro and Ottawa area through the Ottawa Contractor Directory at justynrookcontracting.com/directory.