Brown, Pink & White Noise Generator
Steady background noise for sleep, focus, or covering up a noisy neighbour. Generated live in this page, so it never loops and never buffers.
Sleep timer
The sound stops if this tab goes to the background — browsers suspend audio there, and a phone that locks its screen will cut it off. For a full night, use an app that is allowed to keep playing.
For a whole night
A browser tab stops when the screen locks. Frequency Generator keeps playing, and adds binaural beats and a sweep generator alongside the noise.
Which colour should you use?
Start with brown. It is the deepest of the three and by far the most common preference for sleep and concentration — the high frequencies that make white noise feel harsh are simply not there. Pink sits in the middle and is the closest of the three to natural sound: rain, wind, distant surf. White is the brightest, and it is the best masker of sharp intermittent sounds like conversation through a wall, because it puts energy exactly where speech lives.
Why noise masks other sounds
Silence makes every interruption an event. A door closing at 2 a.m. in a quiet room is a jolt; the same door inside steady background sound barely registers, because the sudden change in level is much smaller. That is what these three colours do — not drown noise out, but flatten the contrast that makes it startling.
It follows that louder is not better. The point is to sit just above the sounds you are trying to mask, no higher. If you cannot talk over it comfortably, it is too loud for a night's sleep.
Generated, not recorded
There is no audio file behind this page. Every sample is produced in your browser: white noise from a random number generator, pink noise by filtering it to fall 3 dB per octave, and brown noise by integrating it so it falls 6 dB. That means no download, no data use once the page has loaded, and no audible seam where a recording would loop.
Questions
What is the difference between white, pink and brown noise?
How the energy is spread. White noise has the same energy at every frequency, so it sounds bright and hissy. Pink noise drops 3 dB per octave, which matches how we perceive loudness and sounds like steady rain. Brown noise drops 6 dB per octave and is dominated by low frequencies — a deep rumble, like a waterfall from a distance. Brown is the one most people end up preferring for sleep and focus.
Is brown noise actually good for focus or ADHD?
The honest answer is that the evidence is thin and mixed. There is decent research showing steady background noise helps some people concentrate and helps others not at all, and a lot of enthusiastic claims online that go far beyond what has been shown. It costs nothing to try for twenty minutes and see whether it helps you.
Can I leave it playing all night?
Not reliably in a browser. Phones suspend audio when the screen locks and browsers throttle background tabs, so a web page is not the right tool for eight hours. A sleep timer is here for short sessions; for a full night you want an app that is allowed to keep playing.
Is this streaming audio or using data?
Neither. The noise is generated by your browser from scratch, so after the page loads there is no traffic at all. That also means it never loops audibly and never buffers.
What volume is safe for sleeping?
Quiet enough to talk over. The usual guidance for continuous overnight sound is to stay below about 50 dB — roughly the level of a quiet conversation — and to keep speakers away from a baby's cot rather than beside it.
