Living on main road

I live on a busy main road and I dislike it very much.

You don’t get used to the noise, you only tolerate it.

My main bugbear is motorbikes.

Thought of moving several times, but can’t be bothered.

i live in a quiet cul de sac on the edge of my town - older residents now ...... well younger than me!! however i'm on the flightpath of our local airport but that doesn't bother me.
i saw concorde coming into land from my front door and regularly see the red arrows landing and taking off
when i flew to manchester a few years ago i flew over my house when we took off!!

Traffic noise is always a steady hum in the background in the suburb where I live. Our house is in a quiet cul-de-sac where the comings and goings of vehicles are tolerable and can be interesting too (when I fancy a bit of curtain twitching). The main threat to our enjoyment of our garden is the chorus of lawnmowers and strimmers!

I would hate to overlook a fast, busy road as, apart from the noise, I'd find that environment very violent and stressful. On the other hand, DH spent his childhood in a maisonette right beside a major junction on the North Circular in London. At a tender age he and his siblings mastered the traffic lights to cross the junction and spend happy hours running free in Gunnersbury Park. So I guess it's a case of weighing up the pros and cons. Good luck!

Our house is on a road parallel with the main road running through the small town, but there are no houses opposite and a strip of grass between our road and the main road. It is quite busy but not too noisy. I sleep with the window shut except at weekends when the traffic starts later. I don't notice it in the garden.
What I do like about the position is being able to see other people. We are not far from a bus stop and a small supermarket, so there are people out and about all the time, not too many, but it gives me an outlook and I feel in touch with the outside world. I value this during the pandemic when we have not been able to see friends and family. We might have bought a house in a cul de sac and I am so glad we didnt.

The variety of answers here shows one size does not fit all.
Some of us adjust, some don't.

We sleep with windows open on a "local" main road without problems - the first few weeks were difficult until we adapted but we soon didn't notice the noise.

My new neighbour's dog's regular and persistent barking problem is , however, much worse than traffic to us! It spoils our meals, makes us cross and although they are trying to address it, it is for some reason, horrendously disruptive.
If this was in the village where we used to live (a hamlet really), it would be just as stressful.

Do please check the pollution levels though. Even 20yards can make a massive difference depending on the lie of the land. That's what we found.
Good luck.

I wonder if all those posters who have said how awful noise and fumes are still drive petrol and diesel cars?

I live on the main road going through a village. There's a bus stop just outside our house.
It's always busy, more so around 5pm.
Having lived here for 44 years I'm used to it. There's cars going through during the night and early hours. I sleep in the front bedroom and always have the window closed over night even when it's hot. I can't sleep with the sound of the traffic.
It was so eerie at the start of the first lockdown, no traffic. so personally I don't think I'd like living in a quiet road.

It occurred to me that with electric cars becoming more popular and eventually dominant, that a house on a main road could prove to be a very good investment.

Noise and pollution will decrease substantially.

How long are you planning to stay OP? It will get better and better?

The pollution would worry me more than the noise. So unhealthy and with a warmer climate windows would have to be open.

I wouldn`t live on a main road,noise/polution/can`t have windows open in the heat /people looking in from the top deck of a bus.

Liz46

We lived on the A41 for 25 years and think it may have affected our lungs.

We lived close enough to a motorway for it to be a distant hum. A lot of the children in the area had asthma which may or may not have been related.

We also lived side on to a busy main road and the main noise nuisance was high powered motorbikes in the middle of the night.

It’s very quiet where we live now and it’s been a real selling point recently.

Interesting topic kissngate I can understand that living on a main road in a City or Town must be disturbing with noise and pollution. Unfortunately the same thing is happening in our villages, green fields are sold off and new houses built which expands the villages and makes them unrecognisable from the places they once were. The one main street becomes a thoroughfare with cars, lorries, buses and delivery vans not to mention all the building materials for the new homes. So living in the countryside is not necessarily the quiet life it once was.

You can change almost anything about a house but NOT the position. Also, I wouldn't buy a property on a main road because when the time comes to sell it, a good number of prospective buyers would be put off by the noise and fumes. Keep looking - and always keep in the back of your mind its resale value!

I never did get used to the planes when we lived on Hounslow under the flight path, though the rest of the family managed to ignore them. We have also been house-hunting and avoided those backing on to the A1 because we were worried about pollution more than the noise. I'd advise avoiding a busy road if you can.

I think we get used to any noise that is regular - my garden backs onto a main railway line, and my house is on the flight path from Heathrow. I hardly notice the noise from either, but when I have visitors they remark on it,

I don’t think I would want to be too close to a motorway or busy dual carriageway road.

We had double glazed windows and never opened the ones facing one of the busiest streets in Copenhagen. That way the noise was bearable.

Moved to the country and still - six years later, enjoy the lack of traffic here.

Looking back I am certain the noise was a stress factor.

My advice is to try and find a house or flat in a side street.

Make sure to go back of a weekend and evening to see how many cars park in the lay by. I take by lay by you mean like a service road for all your houses rather than a lay by with a drinks and burger van!
I live on what I call a busy road but its not a main road going between towns - it doesn't even have a letter with a number just a name. We are fifty feet back from the road and we've got used to what noise we do have. Cars waiting at the pedestrian crossing with their windows down and music blaring are a different matter. However, they don't stay long! We cannot hear anything in the back garden.
Ask the vendors why they are moving and if it has anything to do with the traffic?

I grew up by a railway and used to feel the rumble of an approaching train before I heard it. I found I was most disturbed by light rather than sound at night - if I stayed somewhere with thin curtains and street lights outside I wouldn't sleep a wink - but as I've got older I often fall asleep with lights and TV on all night and don't even make it upstairs! I'm looking to downsize in a year or two and noise and fumes were not something I'd considered but maybe I should - particularly the fumes! However, on my must have list is being close to a decent public transport network so maybe there will be a conflict there. I dread maybe not being able to drive and not being able to get out and about easily.

We moved to our current house on a main road 25 years ago and did indeed get used to the noise. However, in the past few years the traffic has increased, as has the noise, and the air quality is poor. If at all possible, look elsewhere.

When I first stayed overnight at my son’s place in Kew, I couldn’t believe the noise from the planes! They stop at around 11.30 pm and start again at around 5 am. Walking through Kew Gardens on some days there seems to be a constant stream of planes. Son said he just took a few days to get used to it.

I live off a busy road. Main problem is litter thrown from cars, people turn round in our driveway, lots of cats get killed. We have a railway line too. Modern double glazing helps.

I live on a Main Road but the house is set well back from the road with both a wide grass verge plus a very wide pavement before the driveway to our house. There is noise but not once inside the house and our main living room is at the back so the patio doors out to the garden are open frequently with no unwelcome noise noticed.
The one thing I do like is, no houses opposite with cars parked in the road, making parking a problem.

It’s not the noise from the main road that bothers us but we have a small airfield just under a mile from our property and it’s like living under the main flight path at Heathrow at times. Now we’re coming out of lockdown it’s much busier as people are using their planes again. It was fairly quiet when we first moved here but more and more people seem to have the money to indulge in their hobby without any consideration for local residents.

We moved in March this year to a house on a main road, at the time my husband viewed it but it was lockdown and it was quiet! To answer your question NO it’s 5 months on and the noise is driving us mad! If we sit out in our back garden we can hear it, if we are in our drive trying to talk to neighbours you have to stop when a lorry goes past and we can’t have our windows open at night because of the noise which I find suffocating! The house is definitely dirtier than where we used to live because of the traffic fumes. My advice if you want peace and quiet is avoid at all costs. Oh and even though we live in a village the lorries, ambulances, fire engines etc use the road as a rat run.

I would never buy a house on a main road ever again! We've just spent nearly two years trying to sell our lovely big victorian villa on a main road in Bristol. It was well back off the road (80ft) and the back garden was big and very quiet, with rear access and parking. We were there 22 years and got used to the noise, but were never able to open the front bedroom windows due to the road being used 24/7. Lockdown was very quiet!! Everyone who came to the house loved it but being on the main road definitely put people off. We got several very low offers "because of its location on a busy road"! One guy brought a pollution meter with him and found there was no pollution in the house or back garden. When we were looking for property to move to, being on a quiet road was number one on the list! There were several properties on very busy roads that ticked every box but that one, so we didn't even go to see them. My advice would be to wait until something else comes up on a quiet road!