It’s officially festival season. Whether you’re heading to a local concert or spending a weekend in a muddy field with your favourite artists, there’s one thing you shouldn’t leave at home: hearing protection.

Can you hear that ringing?

Have you ever left a concert with ringing in your ears or noticed everything sounded slightly muffled afterwards? This is often a sign of a temporary threshold shift, caused by exposure to loud sounds.

Hearing damage is cumulative, meaning every episode of excessive noise exposure contributes over time, even if your hearing seems to recover afterwards. Although the ringing or muffled hearing often settles within a few hours or days, repeated exposure to loud sounds can eventually lead to permanent tinnitus or noise-induced hearing loss, caused by damage to the delicate structures in the inner ear.

A survey found that 58% of participants reported experiencing tinnitus or temporary hearing loss after listening to loud music, with 33% saying they had experienced this multiple times.

How loud is too loud?

Sound levels at concerts and festivals commonly range between 95 and 110 dB, with levels near speaker stacks sometimes exceeding 120 dB. To put this into context, prolonged exposure to noise above 85 dB can damage your hearing and increase your risk of permanent hearing loss.

But what counts as prolonged exposure? At 100 dB, the recommended daily safe listening time is only around 15 minutes.

Take a minute to consider this for other loud noises in your life, such as headphones, garden machinery, and sporting events. It doesn’t take much for safe listening time to reduce dramatically. Every increase of just 3 dB halves the amount of time you can safely be exposed.

This means that with most concerts lasting more than two hours — and festivals usually much longer — listening without protection puts your hearing at risk of damage.

The chart below shows common everyday sounds, their typical noise levels, and the recommended safe listening times.

Despite the risks, a survey found that 78% of music lovers were unaware that an event at this level of noise could cause permanent hearing damage.

Long-term effects of loud noise

Noise-induced hearing loss can occur over time as a result of prolonged and frequent exposure to loud sounds, or sudden exposure to a very loud sound. It is the second biggest cause of hearing loss after age-related factors.

Many people don’t notice the effects of noise-induced hearing loss until it has built up over time, but tinnitus is often the first sign of damage.

If you’ve noticed a ringing in your ears after a concert or a festival, this could be your first sign that you need to be protecting your ears.

The Good News

The good news is the damage is preventable, and you don’t need to sacrifice your love for live music to protect your ears.

Here are a few simple ways to enjoy live music while protecting your hearing.

1. Wear hearing protection

As many festivalgoers know, sleeping earplugs are an essential item on the festival packing list to ensure a good night’s sleep whilst the music continues well into the night and revellers in neighbouring tents stay up until the early hours. But whilst you think about protecting your sleep, remember to protect your ears, too.

Wearing earplugs is one of the simplest and most effective ways to protect your hearing at concerts and festivals. One of the biggest misconceptions is that earplugs make music sound muffled. While this can be true of standard foam earplugs, music-specific earplugs use specialist acoustic filters that reduce sound evenly across different frequencies. This allows you to enjoy the clarity of the music and conversations, just at a safer volume.

Even inexpensive foam earplugs are far better than no protection at all. If you regularly attend concerts or festivals, however, custom music earplugs provide a much more natural listening experience.

At Hear, we provide custom-made hearing protection for music lovers, festivalgoers and musicians. Made from impressions of your ears, custom earplugs offer a secure, comfortable fit and consistent protection throughout even the longest concerts and festivals.

If you’d like to find out more about our custom hearing protection, get in touch with our team or book an appointment—we’d be happy to help you find the right solution.

2. Be aware of your location

Try not to stand directly beneath the speakers. Avoid standing beside speaker stacks or right at the front of the stage. If possible, stand a little further back or towards the side of the audience, where sound levels are generally lower.

Some suggested places to stand include near the sound engineer’s mixing board (usually mid-venue at the centre), off-centre, mid-to-rear away from the speakers, and in elevated positions.

3. Take breaks and limit exposure

This can be difficult during a concert—especially if, like me, you like to be right in the centre of the action! However, stepping away to a quieter area for at least five minutes every hour gives your ears a chance to recover and helps reduce your overall noise exposure throughout the day.

Thinking about custom hearing protection?

Whether you’re heading to festivals this summer, play in a band, attend regular concerts or simply want to protect your hearing, we offer custom-made hearing protection tailored to your lifestyle.

Get in touch with our team to find out more or book an appointment.

Enjoy the Music. Protect Your Hearing.

Festivals are about making memories—not damaging your hearing.

It might not seem like the ‘cool’ thing to do, but wearing earplugs and being aware of your hearing during a festival can mean the difference between enjoying live music now, and to be able to keep enjoying it for years to come.

Protecting your ears doesn’t mean missing out on the atmosphere or your favourite artists. In fact, many people find music earplugs actually improve the experience by reducing distortion and making conversations easier between sets.

So, before you pack your tent, sunscreen and wellies, don’t forget one of the most important festival essentials: your earplugs. Your future self will thank you.

Now go forth and enjoy!

*This author wore music-specific earplugs at a festival for the first time this summer, and I can confirm, they were brilliant.
If anything, they enhanced the experience. Being fully immersed in the experience whilst drowning out the background noise and knowing my ears were protected meant I could focus on the music and made the experience a lot more enjoyable.
I wouldn’t go to a festival without them now!