A small flat can feel louder than a large house. Hard floors, bare walls and one shared wall with the neighbours leave sound with nowhere to go but round and round the room. The good news is that quiet in a tight space is mostly about layers and position rather than square metres. You can carve out a genuinely restful corner in a studio or a one-bed without knocking through a wall or spending much at all. You just need to know which noises you are actually fighting, and which soft, cheap things will blunt them.

Work out what you are hearing

Sit in the spot where you would like the quiet corner to be, at the times you would use it — early morning with a coffee, or nine in the evening. Listen properly for five minutes. You will usually find the problem is one of three things, and each needs a different answer.

Airborne noise — voices, televisions, traffic — comes through gaps and thin walls, and soft furnishings genuinely help. Structure-borne noise — footsteps, bass, a neighbour's washing machine — travels through the building itself. Cushions will barely touch it, so plan to mask it rather than chase it. Noise inside the room — a humming fridge, a buzzing charger, the boiler clicking on — is often the easiest thing of all to fix.

Then measure the distance. Moving a chair a metre away from a party wall will do more for you than almost anything you can buy. Decide where the sound is coming from before you spend a penny, and put your effort there.

Build the corner out of soft layers

Once you have a spot, keep adding soft things until the space feels padded. Each layer takes a little energy out of the sound that would otherwise bounce off the walls and back at you.

• A thick rug with an underlay on a hard floor — the underlay matters as much as the rug.
• Full, lined curtains, gathered to at least one and a half times the width of the window and long enough to touch the floor.
• An upholstered chair rather than a wooden stool or a plastic one, ideally with a high back.
• Two or three cushions and a throw that live in the corner and are actually used.
• A fabric lampshade and a warm bulb instead of a bare ceiling light, which flattens a small room.
• A shelf or two of books — dense, uneven surfaces break up reflections far better than an empty wall.
• A basket or blanket box to hold the clutter that otherwise drifts into the calmest spot in the flat.

Visual quiet matters as much as acoustic quiet. A corner with a lamp, one chair and a clear floor will feel calmer than the same corner with three bags and a drying rack in it, even if the decibel level is identical.

Close the gaps

Sound gets through air, so the weak points are the openings. Walk round the room and look at the edges: the bottom of the door, the letterbox, the keyhole, the gap around the pipe under the sink, the trickle vent above the window. A cheap brush or rubber draught excluder on the front door, a weighted fabric door snake, foam tape around the inside of a door frame and a keyhole cover will all take the edge off a hallway or landing.

A word of caution: never block ventilation you need. Extractor fans, trickle vents and any air supply to a gas appliance are there for a reason. If you are unsure what a vent does, ask a qualified tradesperson before you cover it.

If you rent, work with things that leave no trace — tension rods, magnetic curtain rods that clip to a metal door frame, removable adhesive hooks. A heavy fabric panel hung on the inside of a front door does more than you would expect, and comes down in seconds when you leave.

Room by room

Living room

Pull the sofa 10 to 15 centimetres away from the shared wall and put the bookcase there instead — mass helps a little, and books do not rattle. Angle the television and any speakers so they are not pointing straight at the wall your neighbour is behind. Stick felt pads on the feet of every chair, stool and table; it costs almost nothing and removes the scrape that makes a small room feel restless.

Bedroom

The bed is usually the biggest object in the flattest room, so place it deliberately: against an internal wall if the layout allows, rather than the wall you share with a stairwell or next door's television. Hang the heaviest curtains you can, keep the wardrobe against the party wall and keep it full. A fan on low, or a steady masking sound on a timer, will cover the footsteps and traffic that soft furnishings cannot reach.

Kitchen, bathroom and hallway

These are the hard-surface rooms, and they set the tone for the whole flat. A cork mat by the sink, a bath mat, towels hung full width on a rail rather than folded over a hook, soft-close bumpers on cupboard doors, a rubber mat under the washing machine and a lid seal on the bin will all cut the clatter. Run appliances at sensible hours, and if the hallway echoes, a long runner and a coat rack full of coats will quieten it faster than anything else you could do.

Screens, shelves and dividers

In a studio or a one-bed you often need a physical break as much as an acoustic one. A folding screen, a ceiling curtain track with a heavy curtain pulled across at night, or a bookcase set perpendicular to the wall will give your eye somewhere to rest and stop the room behaving like a single hard box. If you want the divider to do acoustic work as well as visual work, it needs to be solid and reach the floor — a slatted screen with a thick blanket hung behind it is a reasonable compromise, and far cheaper than a stud wall. Be realistic: a screen will not silence a neighbour. It will make your corner feel like a place of its own, which is half of what you are after.

Making the corner stick

Keep the corner clear. A small basket with headphones, earplugs, a paperback and a blanket is all the kit you need; anything more becomes clutter and you will stop using it. Sit there daily, even for ten minutes, so it becomes

Photo: 🇻🇳🇻🇳 Việt Anh Nguyễn 🇻🇳🇻🇳 / Pexels