Loud TV in flat above

[Minrofor]

Elderly neighbour above has TV blaring out from late morning until 2/3am every single day. Its loud enough to hear the words being said and I'm not even in the room directly above. I have never mentioned this to them as I know it will cause distress but it's affecting my sleep most nights. Would it be unfair to ask them to turn it down after a certain time and how would you approach this.
Neighbour does not have a hearing problem when speaking face to face so I'm not sure if its a loneliness thing but it's becoming unbearable.
I'm not in a position to move home as much as I'd like to.

We had this with our next door neighbour (very thin walls). It would be on every night to the early hours at full blast, so loud that I knew which adverts were playing because you could hear the dialogue crystal clear. The worst bit was she’d sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, turn the telly on at full blast and somehow fall asleep again leaving it on all night. It really messed with my sleep, particularly on work days.

I ended up going over one day and very politely explaining the issue and asked if she wouldn’t mind turning it down, or maybe adding a timer that meant it turned off after a certain time etc. It wasn’t overly dramatic - direct but civil. She was very apologetic and from then on made an effort to improve. I also told her if she could ever hear us and we were disturbing her to just let us know, making a joke about the rubbish thin walls etc. Occasionally it would still happen but nowhere near the same frequency.

I know you never know how people will react and some people are just shitty, but I think you’re fine to go over and just explain the situation - be polite, calm and just explain why it’s been an issue so can they turn it down after a certain time. Chances are they have no idea it’s as loud as it is. If they do kick off, you know it’s nothing you’ve done if you approached it politely etc.

I also think a face to face chat is better than a note, as it can be difficult to interpret tone in writing and might be construed as pass agg. Also in my experience people are more likely to want to help when they’ve seen your face and spoken to you rather than just read a faceless note.

Thank you, I agree a note is not the way to do it. I'm also wondering if they too are falling asleep with it on. Sound advice 👌

I completely understand. We used to have neighbours that were very loud. The tv in their bedroom was directly the other side of the wall our bed was on, and they used to have it in excessively loud every night until about 4am. (We tried looking at rearranging our bedroom furniture but it just wouldn't work any other way).
Or if it wasn't the tv it was music on most of the day and until the same early hours of the morning.
Or diy at 11-11.30pm or later.
It was often impossible to get to sleep. We never said anything but looking back I wish we had. Luckily they moved, but we still had over a year of it.