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On the surface, the different colors of noise can be a perplexing topic.
Many of them sound pretty similar to one another, and it’s inherently a bit puzzling that noises have ‘colors’ in the first place. That said, whether you’re making your own music or simply looking for some ambience to sleep to, understanding the various colors of noise can be helpful in a surprisingly wide array of applications.
In this article, we overview the common noise types (white noise, pink noise, etc.) in addition to some more obscure ones (ever heard of blue or gray noise?) and break down their differences.
Maybe you use white noise in your sound design, or maybe your top song on Spotify in 2018 was “Looped, Loopable Brown Noise” by Sleep Noise Machine, like my mom.
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The colors of noise: White, pink, and brown
1. White noise
Let’s start with the most straightforward, and probably the most well-known: white noise. White noise is comprised of an equal amount of every frequency, all played at once. It happens in real life when your TV or radio makes static noise.
However, because of our ears’ frequency response, we perceive higher frequencies as louder, so it doesn’t sound particularly balanced to most people. Pretty much any other color is basically a slight variation on white noise, based on a rough comparison between the frequency spectrum and the color spectrum. The most obvious and least helpful to know about, black noise, is simply silence.
Here’s what white noise sounds like:
2. Pink noise
Pink noise is essentially bass-boosted white noise, where the amplitude decreases as the frequencies get higher. It got its name thanks to the pink / violet hues present at the lowest frequencies of light. This is the perceptually ‘balanced’ white noise that many of us are comfortable with; a lot of ‘white noise machines’ actually play something that’s a lot closer to pink noise.
Pink noise sounds similar to the rumble of a thunderstorm, and it’s been proven to help people sleep. It’s based on a mathematical curve that can be found everywhere, from DNA to the stock market to traffic jams—but we won’t get into that right now.
Here’s what pink noise sounds like:
3. Brown noise
Brown noise is the only color we’ll be discussing with a name that doesn’t come from the color spectrum (although some people do call it red noise for that reason). Its namesake is Brownian motion, the term that physicists use to describe the way that particles move randomly through liquids.
Brown noise is even bassier than pink noise; while pink noise boosts bass to adjust for human ears, brown noise boosts bass a bit more, just to further warm things up. This noise is similar to the sound of waves crashing or winds roaring, so if you’re a fan of the sea, brown noise might be the noise for you!
Here’s what brown noise sounds like:
Noise colors that are less common
1. Blue noise
Blue noise is, unsurprisingly, the opposite of pink noise. Rather than being bass-boosted, it’s treble-boosted, and the frequencies are so high that most of them are barely even perceptible to us. It sounds pretty similar to the hiss that occurs when you stick your thumb in a hose with running water—a high, screechy tone.
In a similar vein, some people also use violet noise, which has even louder high frequencies than blue noise (violet is to blue as brown is to pink). These aren’t particularly useful for helping you sleep, but they have an important application in audio dithering.
Here’s what blue noise sounds like:
2. Gray noise
Gray noise is very similar to pink noise, but with one key difference. While pink noise approximates a curve to adjust for all human ears, gray noise is tailored specifically by scientists for each person who uses it.
We all share pink noise, but my gray noise isn’t your gray noise. Gray follows a much less general curve, with more specific dips and jumps at certain frequencies to accommodate one’s unique frequency response. It’s used to treat hearing problems like tinnitus and hyperacusis, and doesn’t have many popular use cases outside of medicine.
Here’s one example of gray noise:
The difference between noise colors
Let’s close off by recapping the difference between some colors of noise that are commonly confused.
Brown noise vs. white noise
Brown noise is significantly bassier than white noise, which features an equal amount of every frequency.
Pink noise vs. white noise
Pink noise is bassier than white noise, which features an equal amount of every frequency. That said, it’s perceptually more balanced to most listeners, and isn’t as bass-boosted as brown noise.
Colors of noise: Conclusion
And there you have it! Depending on who you ask, there are a few other colors of noise with slightly different EQ curves, but they’re all more-or-less based on the colors listed above. Hopefully this article sheds some light for you, and you can now better figure out how to incorporate these noises into your music production (or your sleep schedule).
If you want to play around with noise in music, check out our Collection of royalty-free samples, and join the Splice Discord to let us know what other topics you’d like to see us cover.
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March 5, 2025
