Cocon
Search for focus sounds and you will meet a small zoo of colours: white noise, pink noise, brown noise. Then there is rain, which nobody calls a colour but which people use for the same job. Are they different in ways that matter at your desk? A little. Mostly less than the internet suggests.
What the colours mean
A “coloured” noise is a hiss with no melody, no words and no rhythm. What distinguishes the colours is how the energy is spread across pitches.
- White noise has equal energy at every frequency. Because our ears are more sensitive to high pitches, it sounds bright and hissy, like a detuned radio or a shower heard through a door.
- Pink noise has less energy as the pitch rises, falling by 3 decibels per octave. It sounds softer and more balanced, closer to steady wind or distant surf.
- Brown noise (named after Robert Brown, of Brownian motion, not the colour) falls faster, by 6 decibels per octave. It is dominated by low frequencies: a deep rumble, like a strong waterfall or the cabin of a plane.
None of these is “better” in the abstract. They differ in how much of the room they cover, and in how they feel after two hours.
What actually helps you focus
The strongest, best-documented effect is simple masking. Unexpected, intelligible sounds — above all other people’s speech — are the most disruptive thing for mental work. In a classic experiment, Salamé and Baddeley (1982) showed that speech you are trying to ignore still degrades short-term memory, even when you do not understand it. A steady, speechless sound fills the gaps and makes a conversation less noticeable.
For that job, the colour is secondary. What matters is that the sound is continuous, broad enough to cover the frequencies of voices (mostly between about 100 Hz and a few kilohertz), and quiet enough to forget.
Beyond masking, the evidence is thinner than its popularity. A frequently cited study, Söderlund, Sikström and Smart (2007), found that white noise improved memory task performance in children with attention difficulties, while slightly lowering it in children without. That is a small, specific result; it does not establish that any colour of noise boosts focus for everyone. We know of no robust study showing that brown noise in particular makes healthy adults more productive. Plenty of people find it comfortable, and that counts, but it is a preference, not a proven effect.
So which one for what?
Here is a practical reading of the differences:
- White noise covers the most ground, but its brightness tires many people over a long session. Fine for short bursts, or when a room has sharp sounds such as keyboards and clinking cups.
- Pink noise is the gentler all-rounder. If you try only one colour, try this.
- Brown noise is the most soothing to people who dislike hiss. Its weakness is that it masks high-pitched sounds less well — a phone ringing or a laughing colleague can still cut through — and on laptop speakers it will barely be reproduced at all. Through headphones it is at its best.
And rain?
Real rain is not a pure colour. It is made of thousands of small impacts, which gives it a broad spread across pitches, somewhat like pink noise, but with an organic texture: slight variations, a soft patter on top of a low hush. Researchers often find that sounds of nature, as opposed to artificial ones, are pleasant and restorative to listen to; one brain-imaging study, Gould van Praag et al. (2017), found that natural soundscapes were associated with more outward-directed attention than artificial ones.
The trade-off is that rain is less uniform than generated noise. For many people that is the point: it does not feel like a machine. For others, a slow-moving gust or a heavier drop every so often can catch the attention. Light rain suits most work; a heavier downpour makes a better mask for a loud room. We cover the choice more broadly in which ambient sound for which kind of work, and the reasons rain works so well in why rain sounds help you focus.
A running river sits in between: a broad, constant rush with a little more low-end than rain, a natural cousin of pink-to-brown noise, and with no pattern to latch on to.
How to test it for yourself
Evidence about averages tells you little about you. Try this for a week:
- Pick one task you do regularly, such as writing or email.
- Spend a day on each candidate: silence, pink noise, brown noise, rain.
- Note how long you worked before you got restless, and how you felt at the end.
- Keep the volume low, just loud enough to blur the background. If you notice the sound, it is too loud.
If silence wins, take silence. Ambient sound is a tool, not an obligation.
A word on your ears
Do not turn noise up to drown out a loud room, especially in headphones. Long exposure to sustained high volume can damage hearing, and steady noise at a moderate level is as effective as loud noise for masking. If you have a hearing condition or ongoing attention difficulties, talk to a health professional before relying on any sound as a remedy; this article is general information, not medical advice.
Where Cocon fits
Cocon plays real recordings rather than generated hiss: Rain for a pink-leaning, textured wash, River for a deeper constant rush, and Storm when you need more cover. A single intensity slider changes sound and picture together, so you can raise the cover without hunting for a different track.
Sources
- Salamé, P. & Baddeley, A. (1982). Disruption of short-term memory by unattended speech: implications for the structure of working memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21(2), 150–164.
- Söderlund, G., Sikström, S. & Smart, A. (2007). Listen to the noise: noise is beneficial for cognitive performance in ADHD. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(8), 840–847.
- Gould van Praag, C. D. et al. (2017). Mind-wandering and alterations to default mode network connectivity when listening to naturalistic versus artificial sounds. Scientific Reports, 7, 45273.
