Guide

By Filip Kowalski · Updated September 20, 2026

How to Sleep with a Snoring Partner: What to Try Tonight

Couple in bed at night, one awake with earplugs

Earplugs plus a quiet sound in the room is what most people who manage this end up with, because neither one does much on its own. A snore has two parts. The deep rumble is what travels through a pillow, and brown noise is a deep rumble too, so it covers some of it. The snorts and catches of breath are sharper sounds, and rain or white noise softens those. You can try brown noise free in a browser tab at slonoise.com tonight, while the snoring is actually happening, which is the only time you can set the volume honestly. And if your partner gasps or stops breathing for seconds at a time, that’s a doctor’s visit before anything else on this page.

Press play and read on.

What to try tonight

If you’re reading this at two in the morning with an hour of sleep behind you, two things can work the same night.

Earplugs go in first. Foam plugs, rolled thin between your fingers and pushed in until they feel sealed, take more off a snore than a bedroom speaker can add without becoming its own problem. The number printed on the packet is a laboratory figure, and how well you get them in decides most of what you actually get. What plugs don’t give you is a comfortable room, because with them in, a lot of people end up listening to their own heartbeat.

Then set the sound, and set it while the snoring is happening. A level that seems right in a quiet room at ten o’clock is usually far too low at one. Start below where you think it should be and raise it in small steps, and stop at the first setting where you’re no longer following the snore. That point comes earlier than the point where you can’t hear the snoring at all. Set it again once the plugs are in, because everything you chose beforehand is now wrong.

Put the speaker on your side of the bed, between your head and them, close to you. You’re trying to raise the background at one pair of ears. A speaker on the far nightstand raises it at both, which wakes the person who was asleep and does less for you.

Two more things cost nothing. Go to bed first if you can, so you’re under before the snoring starts. And ask them to roll onto their side, which the NHS lists among its self-help steps for snorers; a pillow behind their back helps them stay there. That request lands better in the morning than at two, when neither of you is at your best.

Which sound covers snoring best?

Brown noise for the rumble, rain or white noise for the snorts. It’s quicker to hear the difference than to read about it, so give each of these a few seconds without touching the volume.

Brown noise is a deep rumble with almost nothing bright in it, which is why it reaches the low part of a snore that comes straight through a comforter. White noise is an even, higher-pitched hiss, so it blurs the snorts and the catches of breath and leaves the rumble alone. Heavy rain is hiss with drips over it, and most people find it easier to leave on all night than flat noise.

You don’t have to pick one. Run rain quietly under brown noise in the Slo mixer and keep the pair at the level the brown noise alone was sitting at, so you gain the second texture without gaining volume. The colors of noise guide covers how these textures differ if you want the longer version.

Turning it up is the one thing that won’t help. Masking works on the gap between a sound and its background, so a snore that runs well above your background comes through whatever you do, and the volume it would take to cover that peak is a noise you’d resent by morning. A phone speaker can’t play the deep part at all, so use flat earbuds you can sleep in, or a small speaker set a little way from the pillow.

Timer or all night?

When the problem is simply falling asleep, a timer makes sense and a quiet room afterwards is the goal. Snoring turns that around. It doesn’t stop when you drop off, so a sound that ends at 45 minutes hands you a silent room at two in the morning with the snoring still in it. In Slo the all-night option runs eight hours, and leaving the timer off works too. How to use brown noise for sleep covers the ordinary case, where a timer is the right call.

What to try this week

Get plugs that suit your ears. Foam is cheap enough to try two or three shapes across a week, and the smaller sizes sold for narrow ear canals are worth a go if standard ones ache or work their way out by morning. Comfortable plugs you keep in all night beat a higher-rated pair you pull out at three.

Change one thing per night, and give each change a few nights before you judge it. A new sound, a new volume, a new speaker position and a new pack of plugs all at once tells you nothing about which of them helped.

Have the conversation in daylight, and be gentle with it. Nobody chooses to snore, and a partner who only hears about it at 2 a.m. hears a complaint about who they are. Weight, alcohol in the evening, a blocked nose and sleeping flat on the back all make snoring worse, and the NHS lists those as things a snorer can work on. Snoring that started recently, or that’s clearly getting worse, is worth naming out loud instead of covering up.

Separate rooms deserve a mention, because the honest version of this advice includes them. Sound reaches your ear and never reaches their airway, so no amount of setup fixes the snore itself. If one of you is losing sleep most nights, a week in the spare room tells you a lot, and plenty of couples sleep apart and stay perfectly fond of each other.

When snoring needs a doctor

This is the part worth acting on quickly. The NHS says to see a doctor if snoring comes with gasping or choking, with breathing that stops and starts during sleep, or with heavy sleepiness during the day. Those point to sleep apnea, which it calls serious if nobody treats it.

You’re probably the only person who can report any of it, because your partner is asleep through the whole thing. On the next bad night, count the pauses and roughly how long they run, then take that to the appointment. It’s more useful than anything you can tell a doctor about your own sleep.

As for the sound, nobody can honestly promise it more than a small effect. The 2021 review of steady sound and sleep found it cut both ways, helping some sleepers and disturbing others, and the reviewers marked the evidence down as very low quality. So run it as a cheap experiment for a week, keep it quiet, and let the earplugs carry the load.

Common questions

What sound covers snoring best?

Brown noise for the deep rumble and rain or white noise for the sharper snorts, which is why plenty of people end up running both quietly. Brown noise reaches the part of a snore that comes through a pillow. Rain and white noise are higher-pitched, like the snorts and the catches of breath.

Does white noise work for a snoring partner?

It softens the top half of a snore, so the snorts stop standing out, and it does very little for the deep rumble underneath. Put a low layer of brown noise under it for that part, and expect earplugs to do more than either sound.

Earplugs or white noise?

Both, and the earplugs matter more. Foam plugs take the loud peaks down further than a bedroom speaker can without becoming a nuisance itself, and the sound then fills the quiet the plugs leave, so you’re not lying there listening to your own pulse. Set the volume again once the plugs are in.

Should the sound run all night or on a timer?

All night. Snoring doesn’t stop when you drop off, so a sound that ends at 45 minutes hands you a silent room at two in the morning with the snoring still in it. In Slo the all-night option runs eight hours, and leaving the timer off works too.

Will this stop the loudest snores waking me?

No. Masking works on the gap between a sound and its background, so a snore well above your background still gets through, and the volume it would take to cover that peak would keep you awake by itself. It thins out the ordinary run of snores, which is worth having on a bad night.

When is snoring a reason to see a doctor?

When it comes with gasping or choking, with breathing that stops and starts, or when your partner is very sleepy during the day. The NHS says to see a doctor about those, because they point to sleep apnea, which it calls serious if nobody treats it. You’re probably the only person who can report it, since they’re asleep through all of it.

Should we sleep in separate rooms?

It’s a fair option, and plenty of couples do it without anything being wrong between them. If one of you is losing sleep most nights, two rested people in two rooms beats two tired people in one. Try it for a week before you decide what it means.

Sources

NHS, Snoring, for when to see a doctor and for the self-help steps a snorer can try.
Riedy and colleagues (2021), Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review, for the limit on what steady sound can be promised to do.