We Scanned 50 Rooms — Here's What We Found

We've talked to a lot of people who are frustrated with how their home sounds. But talking only goes so far. So we did something different: we analyzed 50 real room scans across a range of homes and room types — living rooms, bedrooms, home offices, kitchens — and asked a simple question.

What does the average home actually sound like?

The answer surprised us. Some rooms we expected to be bad were fine. Some rooms we expected to be fine were surprisingly rough. And almost every room had at least one thing going for it — even the ones that scored low.

Here's what we found.

First: What Does a Score Actually Mean?

RoomTone scores rooms on a 0–100 scale. It's not a grade — it's a picture of how your room handles sound right now.

• 80–100: Excellent. Mostly soft materials, minimal echo, good voice clarity.
• 60–79: Good. Some issues, but nothing dramatic. Minor improvements would help.
• 40–59: Fair. You've probably noticed something feels off, especially on calls or with music.
• 20–39: Poor. The room is working against you. Hard surfaces, bare walls, likely some bass buildup.
• 0–19: Rough. Echo, boom, and muddy sound are all present. This room needs help.

Most people assume their rooms are fine until they hear the number. More on that in a minute.

The Average Home Scores 52

The average score across all 50 rooms was 52 out of 100.

That puts the typical home solidly in the "Fair" range — not failing, but noticeably imperfect. Most people who scored in this range told us they'd been vaguely aware something was off, but hadn't connected it to the room itself.

The range was wide: the lowest score was 18 (a bare-walled kitchen with tile floors and no curtains). The highest was 89 (a furnished bedroom with carpet, heavy curtains, and a bookshelf wall that acted as natural diffusion).

The most common single score? 47. Rooms clustered in the 40s far more than anywhere else.

Average Score by Room Type

Not all rooms are created equal. Here's how different spaces performed:

Bedrooms scored highest (avg: 67). Makes sense. Most bedrooms have carpet, curtains, a bed — all materials that absorb sound. You've accidentally acoustically treated your bedroom without thinking about it.

Kitchens scored lowest (avg: 39). Also makes sense. Tile, countertops, cabinet fronts, open shelving — basically a collection of the hardest, most reflective surfaces in your home.

Home offices surprised us (avg: 58). We expected worse, given how many people complained about their calls sounding echo-y. But offices tend to have desks, chairs, bookshelves, and often some carpet or rugs — which helps more than people realize. The offices that scored low were the ones with bare walls and laminate floors, set up in a spare bedroom that hadn't been furnished yet. See Best Acoustic Panels for Home Offices for what actually moves the needle.

Living rooms were in the middle — and the most variable (avg: 48). This was the room with the widest score range, from 22 to 79. A furnished, rug-and-sofa living room can sound surprisingly good. A new-construction living room with hardwood floors, white walls, and minimal furniture can sound terrible.

The Three Most Common Problems

Across all 50 rooms, three issues showed up again and again.

1. Echo on parallel walls (found in 68% of rooms)

Hard, flat walls facing each other — which describes almost every room ever built — create what's called flutter echo. Sound bounces back and forth until it fades out. The fix is usually as simple as breaking up at least one of those surfaces with a bookshelf, art, a tapestry, or an acoustic panel.

2. Bass buildup in corners (found in 54% of rooms)

Low-frequency sound tends to collect in room corners, especially in square or nearly-square rooms. This is why a room can sound "boomy" — like everything has too much low end. It's particularly noticeable with music, movie bass, and some male voices. Furniture in corners, or bass traps, can help significantly.

3. Bare floors in high-traffic areas (found in 71% of rooms)

This was the most common finding by far. Hardwood, tile, laminate, or concrete floors are incredibly reflective. A single large area rug can raise a room's score by 8–12 points on its own. It's the most cost-effective acoustic improvement available for most homes.

The Biggest Score Improvements We Saw

Some rooms improved dramatically with simple changes. Here are the highest single-fix point gains we tracked:

The biggest improvement we saw in a single room: +24 points in a home office after the owner added a large rug, thick curtains, and a bookshelf full of books on the bare wall behind their monitor. Their score went from 31 to 55 in a weekend.

Surprising Finding #1: Furnished Rooms Are Often Acoustic Accidents

Many of the best-scoring rooms weren't intentionally treated for acoustics. They just had a lot of stuff — a full bookshelf, a sofa with throw pillows, an area rug, curtains. Their owners had no idea any of it was "acoustic treatment." They'd just furnished their room normally.

This is actually great news. It means you don't need to buy specialized acoustic panels or foam to have a decent-sounding room. You just need soft things. Rugs, fabric, books, upholstered furniture. The same things that make a room feel warm and lived-in tend to make it sound better too.

Surprising Finding #2: New Construction Scores Poorly

The lowest-scoring rooms weren't old houses with weird shapes. They were new homes. Open floor plans with high ceilings and minimal furniture. Tile backsplashes and hardwood floors and bare drywall. Modern kitchens with glossy cabinet fronts and nothing on the counters.

New construction looks beautiful and sounds rough. The design trends that make a home look like a Zillow listing — bright, minimal, spacious — are exactly the trends that create acoustic problems.

If you moved into a new house recently and something feels "off" about how it sounds, you're probably not imagining it.

Surprising Finding #3: Rugs Are Underrated, Panels Are Overrated

The single most common piece of advice in acoustic forums is "buy some acoustic panels." Our data told a more complicated story.

Panels help — but only for high frequencies. They don't address bass buildup. They don't fix a room with zero soft furnishings. And in a typical home, a good rug will do more acoustic work than a set of foam panels that cost three times as much.

This doesn't mean panels are useless. For a home office where voice clarity really matters, they're a solid investment. If you're evaluating which room acoustics app to use, we've compared the best options for iPhone. But if you don't have a rug in your living room, start there. The data is pretty clear on this one.

What This Means for Your Room

The honest takeaway from these 50 scans: most homes have real acoustic issues that most homeowners have never diagnosed. But most of those issues are also fixable with things that aren't expensive, weird-looking, or hard to install.

The rooms that scored highest weren't built differently. They were just furnished more fully. Books. Rugs. Curtains. Fabric. Life.

The rooms that struggled were usually the ones that hadn't been set up yet — or the ones where someone had gone minimal by design, trading livability for aesthetics.

You don't need to choose between a room that looks good and a room that sounds good. In most cases, they're the same room.

Scan Your Room for Free

Curious what your room scores? RoomTone takes 10 seconds. Point your phone, do one scan, and get your score along with a breakdown of exactly what's causing it and what to do about it.

No acoustic knowledge required. Just a room and a phone. For a comparison of acoustic measurement apps — including Room EQ Wizard alternatives — we've broken down what's right for different users.

[Download RoomTone — Free for iOS and Android]

Data based on 50 room scans conducted in March 2026. Room types included: living rooms (18), bedrooms (14), home offices (11), and kitchens (7). Score improvements reflect single-variable changes tracked over a follow-up period.