Inside the World’s Quietest Room, Where No One Lasts More Than 45 Minutes

Silence has a reputation for being restorative. Spa music. Nature retreats. Noise-canceling headphones that never quite cancel enough. But then there’s the anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, the place so stripped of sound that Guinness named it the quietest room on the planet. Walk inside, and the silence stops feeling like a wellness feature and starts edging into a mental nightmare.

The room sits at –24.9 decibels, according to Guinness World Records. Humans start at zero, so anything below that slides into territory our ears never deal with in normal life. Steven Orfield, founder of the lab, told Hearing Aid Know, “When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear.” Inside the chamber, he said, “You become the sound.”

Visitors repor