You are searching for comfort sounds at eleven at night. The ringing is louder than usual. You have found three options with confusing names, white, pink and brown noise, and a dozen articles telling you one is "better for tinnitus" than the others. None of them seem to agree.
Here is what the three colours actually are, why they feel different in a quiet room, and how to think about choosing one without turning your tinnitus into a research project.
What the three colours actually are
The names come from an analogy with light. Sound can be described by how its energy is spread across frequencies, and each "colour" is a different shape of that spread. The maths is only interesting if you want it to be. The feel of each one is easier to describe.
White noise has roughly equal energy at every frequency the ear can hear. On a speaker, it sounds like television static or an untuned radio: bright, hissy, with plenty of high end. It is the most familiar of the three and the one most people picture when they hear the phrase "white noise".
Pink noise has more energy in the lower frequencies and less in the higher ones. The energy per octave stays roughly constant, which loosely matches how the ear tends to hear. It sounds softer than white noise. Steady rain on a window, a quiet shower in another room, the hush of a well-sealed car at speed.
Brown noise, sometimes called red or Brownian noise, drops away even more quickly at the top end. The result is deep and rumbling. People compare it to a distant waterfall, the inside of an aeroplane, or wind in a chimney. There is almost no hiss at all.
Why the differences matter when your tinnitus is loud
Tinnitus is often described in high, bright terms: ringing, hissing, whistling. If your own tinnitus sits in that range, white noise can feel as if it is adding more of the same, which some people find soothing and others find exhausting. Pink and brown shift the balance downwards, which some people find more restful. Others find brown too close to a lorry at idle and prefer the brightness of white, or the softer edges of rain.
There is no colour that is "right" for tinnitus. Tinnitus UK and the NIDCD both describe sound enrichment as a comfort tool rather than a treatment with a known best setting, and both note that no single sound suits everyone. The honest answer is that comfort is personal and often changes with the time of day.
How to try them without making it worse
Paying attention to tinnitus tends to make it louder. That cuts both ways with comfort sounds: a careful A/B test, with headphones on and the volume cranked, is a reliable way to notice your tinnitus more, not less. A gentler approach:
- Keep the volume low. The aim is to soften the room, not to drown out the sound in your head. If the comfort sound is louder than conversation, it is too loud.
- Use speakers if you can. Headphones at bedtime are fine, but a quiet speaker in the room lets the sound sit around you rather than inside your ears.
- Give each colour a few nights. First impressions are not very reliable, especially on a bad evening. Try one for several nights before switching.
- Mix in natural sounds. Rain, a fan or ocean recordings are often easier on the ear than pure noise, and share some of the same calming qualities.
- Protect the quiet times too. Running comfort sound all day can make silence feel more alarming. Let the room be quiet when it already is.
When comfort sound is not enough
Most tinnitus is not a sign of anything urgent. A few patterns are. According to the NIDCD and the NHS, tinnitus that is new and only in one ear, tinnitus that beats in time with your pulse, or any sudden hearing loss should be assessed by a doctor rather than left to a sound app. The same goes for severe distress, suicidal thoughts, or tinnitus linked to a recent head injury. If any of that applies to you, do not stop at this blog post. Contact your GP or 111.
How TinnitusMe helps with this
TinnitusMe is a tinnitus app, coming soon to iPhone and Android. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and it does not claim to treat, mask or relieve tinnitus. Its built-in sounds are there for comfort, nothing more.
Six sounds, a slider, and a stop-after timer
The Sounds area has six built-in options: White noise, Pink noise, Brown noise, Fan, Rain and Ocean. They play inside the app and keep going with the screen locked, so you can set them running and put the phone down. A volume slider lets you keep the sound soft rather than loud, which matches how most people find comfort sounds genuinely helpful. A "stop after" timer with options of 15, 30 or 60 minutes means you can fall asleep without the sound running all night.
Alongside the six built-in sounds, TinnitusMe also surfaces "this week's picks" and a full Soundboard page listing sleep stories, guided meditations, calm music and tinnitus talk from other makers. Those open in Spotify or YouTube; TinnitusMe does not host them, and the picks change weekly.
The rest of the app, briefly
Playing a comfort sound is one small corner of TinnitusMe. The bigger idea is simple: you log it when your tinnitus gets louder (a "spike"), and the app collects context around your days by itself, for example sleep, the noise around you, weather and food, with wearable data if you choose to connect a device. Over time, Insights compares your louder days with your quieter ones, and a "Full Report" builds a PDF you can bring to an audiologist. If one of the built-in sounds plays for a minute or more, the app also notes it quietly as a relief, so you do not have to log that part by hand.
None of this turns a sound app into a treatment. It just means that, if you ever want to look back and see whether brown noise seems to sit better with your short-sleep nights, the record is there to look at rather than piece together from memory.