Noise Levels in Paint Rock, NC | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
41 dBA
Average noise across Paint Rock
Soft rainfall
4
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
1% of Paint Rock residents
64 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Paint Rock 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 4 Paint Rock residents, or 1.1%, live above that level. By land area, 8.5% of Paint Rock is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Paint Rock residents, grouped by direction from the center of Paint Rock. Northern Paint Rock carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Paint Rock carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Southern Paint Rock live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, about half the share in Northern Paint Rock.
Northern Paint Rock
43.5 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night
2% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Paint Rock
37.9 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
1% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Paint Rock
41.0 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall
0% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Paint Rock sounds about 47% louder than Southern Paint Rock to the human ear, a 5.6 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 SR-1183 do you need to be?
SR-1183 produces an estimated 55 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
55 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
165 ft
41 dBA
Soft rainfall
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 92% of Paint Rock sits under tree canopy (much heavier than most cities) and roughly 0% 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 Paint Rock. 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 Paint Rock
The bar chart below shows the share of Paint Rock residents in each noise band. About 100% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 0% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Paint Rock Compares
Paint Rock sits the lowest among the peer group. Below: how Paint Rock's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Walnut, Spring Creek, Panther Creek, and Jupiter.
Average noise level (dBA)
Paint Rock's 40.8 dBA pop-weighted average is the lowest among the peer group. North Carolina as a whole averages 49.7 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Paint Rock because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 1.1% of Paint Rock residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's in the middle of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 8.5% of Paint Rock's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a North Carolina average of 22.6% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Paint Rock
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 SR-1183 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 92% of Paint Rock is under tree cover (much 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.
