Your partner snores. What actually helps.

Separate rooms, white noise, pillows over your head. An honest look at what works when someone next to you snores, and what does not.

By the Vespré team Updated 3 min read
A woman lying awake at night beside her partner, who is asleep and snoring

The short answer

You cannot stop the snoring from your side of the bed, but you can change what reaches you. White noise helps with steady sound, separate rooms work but are a big step, and earplugs made for sleep, soft, low and in the right size, turn snoring down enough that it is less likely to wake you.

You have tried the elbow. You have tried going to sleep first. You have probably tried the spare room, and felt strange about it.

Snoring is one of the few sleep problems where the person suffering is not the person making the noise

That is what makes it hard to solve. You cannot fix it from your side of the bed, so the question becomes what you can do about the part you control.

The things people try, and what they are worth

  • Going to sleep firstWorks occasionally. Fails the moment you wake at three, because then you are awake and it is loud.
  • A pillow over your headMuffles some of it, uncomfortable within minutes, and you move in your sleep anyway.
  • White noiseGenuinely helps some people. It masks rather than reduces, which works well for steady sound and less well for snoring, because snoring is irregular and irregular sound is what your brain notices.
  • Separate roomsEffective and unpopular. Plenty of couples do it and sleep better. If it works for you it works, and there is nothing wrong with it.
  • EarplugsThe one most people try, give up on, and blame themselves for.

Why earplugs usually fail here

Two reasons, and neither is your ears.

The first is that they are not built for sleeping. Most earplugs are designed for a shooting range or a building site, worn upright, for an hour, by someone not lying on them. Sleeping is a different job, and the hardest part of it is 3am, when you roll onto your side and the pillow starts working the plug loose.

The second is fit. A plug that does not seal does not work, and a plug that is too large hurts. People try one size, find it uncomfortable, and conclude earplugs are not for them. There is a whole piece on why they keep falling out.

What to look for instead

A shape that sits low in the ear, so a pillow presses your ear rather than driving the plug in, and something that holds it there when you turn over. That is what the soft fin on Vespré Wing is for.

More than one tip size, because ears differ and your own two often do.

Soft silicone rather than foam. Foam expands to work, which means it presses outward for the whole night. Silicone seals by shape instead.

Something you can clean and reuse. You are wearing these every night, not once.

What earplugs will not do

They will not make the room silent, and you should be suspicious of anything claiming otherwise. Snoring is loud and close. The honest description is that earplugs turn it down, so it is less likely to be the thing that wakes you, rather than making it stop.

Most people still hear their alarm, and that is deliberate. Check with a test alarm on your first night.

If you both need them

The person who snores often sleeps badly too. Two pairs, one each, in different colours so nobody grabs the wrong one at one in the morning.

Thirty nights either way. If they are not right, they go back and we refund you.

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