To many people, home is all about peace and quiet. That’s where we go to escape the bustle and the noise of the world, after all. With noisy roommates, boisterous kids, and the relative noise of living in a crowded city, though, many homes just don’t cut it as a place of peaceful respite. Maybe the IKEA Gunnlaug can help ease that just a little.
A sound-absorbing curtain, it boasts higher sound absorption than traditional curtains, allowing it to do a better job of keeping noise out for those times you want some personal quiet time. Whether it’s the sound of the TV from the living room, the kids running around in the next bedroom, or the street traffic outside your apartment building, this thing should help contain all that noise a whole lot better.
The IKEA Gunnlaug is a curtain made from chenille yarn that’s produced using a special weave that, the outfit claims, helps enhance its sound-absorbing capabilities. According to the outfit, this combination of the yarn and the weave allows it to register between 50 to 100 percent higher absorption of medium and high sound frequencies compared to other fabrics with similar quality and weight. Not only will it absorb sound, it also decreases echoes and reverberations for those same frequencies, so it will help dampen sound on both sides of the curtain. Basically, these draped will keep any room a lot quieter, whether you hang them by the windows, by the door, or all around the bed.
According to the outfit, the curtain has been verified according to ISO 354 standards, which is a method of measuring the sound absorption characteristics of various materials. Granted, we don’t know the specifics of the standard to know how well this actually does the job, but we’ll take it. By the way, the curtains are supposed to do their best sound-dampening work when draped with folds, all while allowing for some empty space between the curtain and the wall (anywhere between 9 to 15 cm).
The IKEA Gunnlaug, naturally, does an equally good job of limiting the entry of light in the room, similar to any good curtain, so you can use it to keep the sun out during the day, the street lights out at night, and the weird dude with the binoculars from the apartment building across the street. Basically, it works like every other curtain, allowing you to hang them on a rod or track, while heading tape makes it easy to create pleats when used with the right type of hooks. And yes, you can use those iron-on hemming strips to shorten the curtains without having to do any sewing.
From what we can tell, the curtains look pretty good, making them easy to integrate into the interior of most rooms in any home. It measures 98 x 57 inches (height x width), by the way, allowing it cover an area of 39 square feet, all while weighing 2.2 pounds.
Sold in sets of two, the IKEA Gunnlaug is available now, priced at $49.99.