Noise Levels in Bentonville, VA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
45 dBA
Average noise across Bentonville
Quiet suburban street at night
129
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
10% of Bentonville residents
90 dBA
Loudest residential point
Lawnmower at 1 m
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Bentonville at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.
Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
Click the map to explore
35 dBa55 dBa (EPA limit)90+ dBa
3545557090
Quietest (dBA)Loudest
Colorblind friendlyoff
What the numbers sound like
30 dBAWhisper
40 dBASoft rainfall
45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
50 dBAQuiet office
55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
65 dBABusy restaurant
70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
80 dBACity bus interior
Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold
The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 129 Bentonville residents, or 9.6%, live above that level. By land area, 12.3% of Bentonville is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Bentonville residents, grouped by direction from the center of Bentonville. Northern Bentonville carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Bentonville carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Southern Bentonville live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Northern Bentonville.
Eastern Bentonville
41.1 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
2% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Bentonville
52.1 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
25% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Bentonville
36.5 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
1% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Bentonville
51.6 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
17% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Bentonville sounds about 195% louder than Southern Bentonville to the human ear, a 15.6 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.
How far back from 4236-CULLERS Rd do you need to be?
4236-CULLERS Rd produces an estimated 58 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.
At source
58 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
165 ft
43 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
330 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 55% of Bentonville sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 1% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.
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Rail Noise
Active freight rail runs through parts of Bentonville. For most blocks the rail-only contribution is small. Combined road-plus-rail noise rarely exceeds road noise on its own. The exceptions are the handful of blocks within roughly a quarter mile of the right-of-way during pass-through hours.
Use the Rail toggle on the map above to isolate rail's contribution from road and aviation.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Bentonville
The bar chart below shows the share of Bentonville residents in each noise band. About 87% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 10% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Bentonville Compares
Bentonville sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Bentonville's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Rileyville, Fort Valley, Sperryville, and Karo.
Average noise level (dBA)
Bentonville's 45.0 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. Virginia as a whole averages 52.8 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Bentonville because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 9.6% of Bentonville residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's more than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 12.3% of Bentonville's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Virginia average of 30.0% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Bentonville
Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from 4236-CULLERS Rd and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 55% of Bentonville is under tree cover (heavier than most cities), and the dominant land cover is deciduous forest. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.
Sources & Methodology
The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.
All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.
