Fanno
Pink noise is the middle one. It’s softer than white noise and lighter than brown, and plenty of people describe it as steady rain on a roof. This page plays it the Fanno way: as the tone of a fan, made live while you listen.
Pink noise in plain words
White noise gives every frequency the same energy, which makes it bright. Pink noise gives every octave the same energy instead. An octave is a doubling in pitch: from 100 to 200 Hz, say, or from 1,000 to 2,000 Hz. Higher octaves span far more frequencies, so to keep each octave equal, pink noise gets quieter as it goes up, by about 3 dB per octave. The result sounds balanced, with nothing sticking out: the lows, the middle and the top each hold their share.
That even spread is why it’s so often compared to steady rain, wind in the leaves or a river some way off. For the full comparison with the other two, see white vs pink vs brown noise.
How Pink sounds on Fanno’s fan
In Fanno, Pink is a tone of the fan, the setting between crisp and deep. The fan’s air keeps some of its brightness but loses the hiss, and its low whoosh comes up a touch, so the whole sound is rounder than White. The blades and the room stay as they are. On the box fan, which this page plays at speed 6, it’s a full, soft rush. On the ceiling fan it makes the slow sweep gentler still, and on the air purifier it’s a plain, rain-like hush.
The middle ground
Choosing between tones mostly comes down to what bothers you. If White sounds hissy and Brown sounds muffled, Pink sits between them, and it’s the easiest place to start if you’re not sure. It covers a wide spread of household sounds evenly: a bus pulling away, a door down the hall, the boiler starting up and a floorboard upstairs all land on the same steady, balanced bed of sound.
Rain makes a good test. If you’ve ever left a window open just to hear it, Pink is the tone to try first.
Settings to try
In the app, keep the dial near the middle, around 4 to 7, for a balanced fan. Lower click-stops turn Pink into a soft murmur, like light rain; higher ones fill it out toward a downpour. For a touch more air, press White; for more depth, press Brown. The keys on the strip above switch tones on the same fan while it plays, so you can hear the difference in a second.
Pink all night: the app
A browser is fine for a listen, but on iPhone it stops a page’s sound when the screen locks. The free Fanno app plays on with the screen off and puts play and pause on the Lock Screen. Its timer knob counts down 15, 30 or 45 minutes, or one or two hours, then lets the fan fade away gently. There’s a night mode for a dark room, and a Blade texture fader that brings the blades’ rhythm up through the rain or smooths it out.
Four fans, three tones, no ads, no account and no data, with no connection needed, on iPhone and iPad.