Noise Levels in Wilder Chapel, TN | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

43 dBA
Average noise across Wilder Chapel
Quiet suburban street at night
3
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
2% of Wilder Chapel residents
67 dBA
Loudest residential point
Highway traffic 50 ft away

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Wilder Chapel 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
Wilder Chapel, TN Map of Noise Levels in Wilder Chapel
Click the map to explore
35 45 55 70 90
Quietest (dBA) Loudest
Colorblind friendly off

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 3 Wilder Chapel residents, or 2.0%, live above that level. By land area, 2.2% of Wilder Chapel is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in Wilder Chapel compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of Wilder Chapel

Average noise levels for Wilder Chapel residents, grouped by direction from the center of Wilder Chapel. Southern Wilder Chapel carries the highest population-weighted average; Central Wilder Chapel carries the lowest. Just 0% of residents in Central Wilder Chapel live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a fifth of the share in Southern Wilder Chapel.

Central Wilder Chapel

39.0 dBA · Quiet
Soft rainfall

0% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Northern Wilder Chapel

45.2 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

2% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern Wilder Chapel

52.2 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation

7% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern Wilder Chapel sounds about 150% louder than Central Wilder Chapel to the human ear, a 13.2 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 do you need to be?

produces an estimated 67 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
67 dBA
Highway traffic 50 ft away
165 ft
54 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
330 ft
46 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
660 ft
38 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall

Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 0% of Wilder Chapel sits under tree canopy (much lighter 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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How Noise Is Distributed Across Wilder Chapel

The bar chart below shows the share of Wilder Chapel 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 Wilder Chapel Compares

Wilder Chapel sits the highest among the peer group. Below: how Wilder Chapel's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Glen, Martin Springs, Belmont, and Sweeton Hill.

Average noise level (dBA)

Wilder Chapel's 42.7 dBA pop-weighted average is the highest among the peer group. Tennessee as a whole averages 49.2 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Wilder Chapel because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 2.0% of Wilder Chapel 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, 2.2% of Wilder Chapel's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Tennessee average of 18.7% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to Wilder Chapel

  • 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 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 0% of Wilder Chapel is under tree cover (much lighter than most cities), and the dominant land cover is cultivated cropland. 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.

Federal datasets used:

FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System: road geometry, traffic counts, lane configuration
U.S. DoT Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Noise Map: aviation and rail noise, road calibration ground truth
USGS / MRLC National Land Cover Database: land cover and impervious surface coverage
USDA Forest Service Tree Canopy Cover: vegetation density for sound propagation
U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line: block-level geography and population
U.S. EPA Levels Document: 55 dBA outdoor reference level

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.