10 Tips for Building Your Music Studio at Home

Are you planning to build your own home studio? Or are you looking for ways to upgrade your studio? In this post, I give you 10 concrete tips for your home studio design, so that you can produce radio-ready tracks!

Do you ask yourself “What kind of drill is best for household use?” while looking for the best tools to help you build your own home studio? In this post, here are 10 tips on home studio design for the best interior design. Let’s get started!

Choose a suitable space

Choosing the right space can already give a big advantage during mixing and production. For example, it is logical that you are not going to build your studio in your bathroom or toilet. Most budding producers probably don’t have a choice and have to make do with their bedrooms. In this case, you can still follow the other tips in this blog post.

However, if you do have a choice in spaces because, for example, you have just moved, then you have to pay attention to a number of aspects. For example, try to avoid square spaces. Square spaces tend to cause more problems around standing waves. Also, spaces where one wall is twice as long as the other give (to a lesser extent these problems). If you want to read more about this, read the blog post about acoustics in your home studio.

Also, try to choose a space that is symmetrical. If the left and right sides of your room are not the same, you will get a distorted stereo image.

Spaces that consist of many windows or concrete are also not always convenient. These spaces reverberate enormously and provide many reflections of your sound. You really have to spend more time on acoustic treatment in these types of rooms. Preferably go for a room with carpet or wooden floor.

Place your studio furniture on the short side of your room

Place your studio furniture toward the short side of your room. The more length you have behind you, the more the sound waves can develop. As a result, you have less trouble with reflecting sound waves (early reflections) from your back wall.

These reflecting sound waves can cause so-called phase problems. In short, this means that the reflective sound waves will interfere with the direct sound waves from your monitors. This can distort the sound you perceive.

Make sure your studio furniture is in the middle

Symmetry is very important in your studio. If the left side of your room is not the same as the right side, this can affect your stereo image. Here too, the early reflections play a role.

Our ears are super good at estimating spaces. Through reflections, we can hear how big a room is and where we stand in relation to the walls. If your desk is more to the left or more to the right, your one ear will get reflections sooner than your other ear. So we can no longer accurately determine how far sounds are pledged to the left or right. Therefore, place your desk exactly in the middle between your left and right wall.

Put your listening spot on 1/3 of the room

Make sure that the place where you will sit while mixing is about 1/3 of the room. At this point, you can hear the different frequencies of your sound about the same loudly. If you don’t have room for this, try to sit as far away from the wall as possible.

Organize your home studio design as symmetrically as possible

Make sure you decorate your home studio as symmetrically as possible. As well as putting your studio furniture in the middle of your room, improves the balance of your stereo image.

For example, if you have a sofa, place it right behind you, in the middle of the room. Or if you have different instruments, spread them a bit over left and right. It doesn’t have to be super precise, as long as you keep it broadly the same.

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Place your studio monitors the right way

This is probably the most important tip from this blog! Make sure your studio monitors are placed and set up in the right way. Near field studio monitors (best suited for a home studio) should be about 1 to 1.5 meters away from you. This is where they sound the most honest. The distance between the monitors should be the same as the distance between you and the monitors. Make sure you and your monitor form a triangle with three equally long sides.

Make sure that your monitors are preferably on tripods behind your desk and not on your desk itself. Your desk can resonate with you and this affects the sound.

Your near-field monitors have 2 parts where sound can come out. The cone is for low frequencies and the tweeter for high frequencies. The cone is usually at the bottom and the tweeter is at the top. Place the tweeter at the level of your ears.

Then turn your monitors a little so that the front is pointing towards you. You’ve turned your monitors far enough if you can’t see the sides of your monitors from your listening position.

Acoustic treatment in your home studio design

If you have put everything in the right place, you can acoustically treat your room with, for example, absorbent panels. Do you want to know more about acoustics and absorption? Then read my blog about acoustics in your home studio!

Make sure your gear is ready to go

Now that you have optimally arranged your space, you want only one thing: making music! You do not want to lose time with this, otherwise, there is a chance that you will be taken out of your creative flow.

Nothing is as annoying as having to connect your gear before you can start. So make sure that:

• All your instruments are at your fingertips
• Your audio interface is connected
• The monitors/headphones are plugged in
• Now you never have to lose a creative flow again due to unnecessary startup tasks!

• Get to know your gear and space

• The most important rule of mixing: Get to know your gear and space. Listen to a lot of reference tracks in your studio. If you know how the tracks of other producers sound in your studio, then you also know how your tracks should sound. Take the time for this.
• So to speak, you can mix radio-ready tracks on your AirPods, as long as you use reference material.

Create an atmospheric home studio design

Last but not least: make your home studio atmospheric! Create for yourself an inspiring place where you like to be1

For example, place mood lights, give your walls a cool color or create a hangout for friends. For example, you can get inspiration for this via Pinterest. Everything to motivate you to spend a lot of hours there!