Anyone here live in a terrace house?

[Hertfordshire10012]

How do you cope? I can hear my neighbour’s tv, can hear them talking, slamming doors. It drives me mental

Early 80s terrace. I don't hear much at all from my neighbours. They are well built and well designed.

I subconsciously hear their daily comings and goings a bit - front door closing, or gates to put the bins out, that sort of thing. We are mindful of living so close and always let each other know if we're having any work done or the odd party/gathering and I taught my kids to be aware of stomping around. I don't ever want either of them to move.

The only thing one neighbour told me he could hear was our wooden chairs scraping on the tile floor and that was easily fixed with felt pads.

I live in a semi but don't hear neighbours, old houses (Edwardian) thick walls and the layout means it's mainly hallway stairs kitchen bathroom and a small room upstairs and down that adjoin, they mirror so it's the same rooms both sides of the wall, so it's not like it's the living room or bedrooms so I think you're less likely to notice anyway.

I don't hear anything luckily. Maybe the dog barking but that's it. We do live in an old terrace with thick stone walls though!

Terrace here and don't hear either neighbour at all. All I can hear is if I am in the bedroom with window open and their kids playing in their bedroom, but I hear it from window only. House about 30 years old.

End of terrace, adjoining stairs on the ground floor so the only noise is footsteps on stairs, also me and neighbour both have built in wardrobes on shared bedroom wall. Zero noise. Winning 🥇
lived in a flat before moving to this house and noise from neighbours drove me to a nervous breakdown. The house has it’s own, different problems but noise is not one of them. It’s a Victorian cottage

I guess I'm lucky as I only really hear my neighbours if they're doing drilling, banging, loud building work. It's more noisey through the windows into the street as they're only single glazed.
The rooms are quite big I guess. It's really old so maybe the quality of the building was better back then? I know a lot of newer homes tend to have thinner walls, cheaper construction etc.

I live in the middle of a terrace, one side has older teenagers and the other four kids under 10yr old.

I don't really hear anything from the older family. The younger family I can sometimes hear the kids running about and up and down the stairs but it's mostly just background noise and when our house is really quiet with no tv or washing machine noise etc.
Sometimes we hear if theres drilling or hammering the walls.

My house is a new build and it's been designed around a heat pump system so I think there's a lot of insulation.

I'm in a 1920s mid terrace. I can hear the dog on one side, as it whines when left alone. I also occasionally hear light switches, but that's pretty much it. I don't hear the TV or music or anything like that as a rule. I might occasionally if one of my neighbours is having a party or something, but not all the time.

I lived for 20 years in an 1890s terrace and hardly ever heard the neighbours. I now live in a detached and hear the neighbours as they love playing loud music outside. Plus lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, the screaming children in the school over the road…

I do. On one side, we have 3 adult brothers living with their Dad, the Dad and 2 of the brothers are disabled and more or less housebound so the third one is a carer and none of them ever really leave the house. They do a lot of DIY but after asking nicely they limit it to reasonable day time hours. I can't complain at all about them and they are always polite, if a bit quiet, when I see them.

The other side is a lovely lady, who I get on with well, with her adult son. He had mental health difficulties apparently and doesn't work or go out much. He's in his early 30s but acts like a teenager. He has a lot of extremely loud phone conversations all day long, plays loud rap music sometimes for hours on end, plays computer games until 2/3am. We knock on the wall if it's after midnight and he usually stops but we shouldn't have to, it's common sense that a family with 2 working adults doesn't want to listen to him shouting down the phone at 1am!

I think the issue isn't the terraced house, it's the complete lack of consideration for others.

Mid terrace built 1916. We only hear one neighbour in the summer (they permanently back door open) or when they are having a full scale row. It was okay until they knocked down walls to have a completely open plan lounge area, no entrance hall. Wooden floor boards, leather furniture and no soft furnishings to absorb sound.
Otherwise we never hear a sound from neighbour other side.

Lived in loads of old Victorian terraces, never really had any issues with neighbor noise.

Occasionally you might hear a dog bark if they have one or if someone is throwing a party with loud music (but thats pretty rare).

Most noise I ever really hear is neighbors boiler which is mounted on our party wall, use to vibrate a bit but the moved it to the bathroom and now it sounds like running water but its at the far end of the extension now so not an issue.

I have an elderly lady on one side and she sometimes her tv can be too loud. The other side is very quiet.

If people are considerate then terraces are not a problem.

Used to live in a terrace - on one side a couple who used to have really loud obnoxious sex in the middle of the day, and on the other a bloke who smoked weed constantly and had his friends over every night about 11pm to 3am to smoke with him.

Tbh the noise I could deal with, but the smell of the second hand weed smoke coming through the walls was absolutely RANK. I was there less than a year before I moved - thankfully I was just renting.

Both sets of my grand parents lived in Victorian terraced houses. Lovely houses but my word, the party walls were thin!
I remember my gran was able to have a conversation with her neighbour through the wall and would often knock on the wall and ask her if she wanted to pop around for tea etc. Not shouting, just moderately loud talking.

I cope by buying a Victorian terraced house with 14 inch thick walls.

I have lived in my terraced house for over 30 years. I have never heard the TV from either side. I sometimes hear one neighbour playing the piano, but he is good, so it's not a hardship.
The houses are approx 100 years old, so maybe they were better built in those days, with nice thick walls? But I'm inclined to think it's more about people than buildings, and we have just been lucky in our neighbours.

My first house was a Victorian terrace, so built with very solid walls. I lived there for 10 years and absolutely loved it, only sold it because my ex partner persuaded me we needed somewhere bigger.

I really liked hearing the odd noise next door funnily enough, I think that is the joy of a terrace house in my experience, you have your own space but you don’t ever feel lonely if that makes sense.

My neighbour on one side was hard of hearing so I could sometimes hear her TV, the neighbour on the other side I could hear snoring through the wall so I changed bedroom so I wasn’t sleeping up against the adjoining wall.

Thankfully neither side had young children or a barking dog that might’ve been different.

Our is a Victorian 1900 terrace , I can hear the piano next door, their landline phone ringing, kids up and down the stairs, kitchen extractor fan. It’s a small house, 2 bed. I wonder if some of the older Victorian terraces are just m bigger and have better walls. We once lived in a Georgian semi detached cottage and couldn’t hear anything in that one, much thicker walls.

Urgh Victorian terrace was the worst, for me. Single brick walls and all the noise bounced up the staircase from the neighbour's hallway. It was quieter in a new build flat.

Where are these stone constructed Victorian houses? Any I've seen are brick, cheaply built properties to accommodate industrial workers and very prone to damp.

I wish I could adopt that attitude. I find neighbour noise v stressful .
How did you manage to crack it ?
Any tips ?

My terrace house is an old style council house in dublin built in the 1940s. Not quite soundproof but never that much interruptions from either side. My friend bought a similar size new build around the same time and you could hear the neighbours on both sides alot more. Louder wooden floors, private conversions etc. The difference was insane.

God yeh neighbours one side I don’t think know how to talk they shout. Drives me bonkers. I read a stat about how a large percentage of people in the uk suffer with similar noise disturbance. Can’t remember the percentage but it was quite high

This really made me laugh about knocking to ask if she wanted to pop round for tea.
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We're similar to you. New build with one side housing a family if 4 (inc a very shouty mum) and we can barely hear anything. I only hear her shouting if she's in the kitchen with the back door open and I'm in the garden or if I'm in the lounge and she's at the front of the house. The other side is a couple and I can hear it when he's drumming, but otherwise we can't hear them at all.

We always say to each other that the houses have amazing sound insulation.