Insulating interior bath walls...

Hi--I'm adding a bath in the basement. I've framed, done electrical and heating. Sheetrock will go up this week.

I know that people aften insulate the walls of a bath for noise reduction. What sort should I use? Kraft faced?

A simple, but largely ineffective solution is to use 2x6 headers and sills, and 2x4 studs 16" o.c., with the studs alternating facing one side then other side of the wall, so that there are no studs connecting the two drywall faces of the wall.

My experience has been that simply adding insulation to a conventionally-framed wall won't help very much -- the framing itself is a great sound conductor. The good news is that with today's trend to installing home theaters, there's a lot of interest in, and a lot of vendors selling, acoustic insulating products. The bad news is that they're pretty pricey.

If you're serious about this, though, contact any high-end audio showroom, or spend some quality time with Google. I've seen such "room-within-a-room" installations and the sound reduction is, indeed, dramatic, but as I said, the cost is also.

To answer your question, there's probably no difference -- Kraft-faced or not. Neither one will work very well.

Mikey - no disrespect, but he's not looking to soundproof a sound studio, he just doesn't want to hear people peeing.

Some years ago, my shop/storage was under a bar. You can do quite a bit, even without offset studs.

Regular fiberglass won't absorb loud noises much, but it still makes a very noticeable difference, compared to a hollow wall. Faced or unfaced doesn't really matter, but unfaced is a lot less unpleasant to work with.

For serious soundproofing of normal-framed walls, I was amazed at how much of a difference hemasote "soundstop" panels make - also weatherstripping on the door.

Dynamat if your really serious about sound deadening and have the money.

http://www.dynamat.com/products_architectural_introduction.html