Why are walls typically textured in Seattle-area houses?
Textured walls anywhere (not just Seattle) help absorb sound to prevent echos, and to reduce sound levels from adjacent rooms. If you’ve ever toured a house in progress and talked in a room that has just been drywalled, but still has bare flooring and no wall/ceiling texture, you’ll notice quite a bit of echo, and that your voice pretty much carries throughout the house. Once the texturing goes up on the wall (and even more so if carpet is installed), the echo pretty much disappears, and your voice will be less audible at the other end of the building. Home theater enthusiasts find this particularly beneficial in the realm of home theater audio. Die-hard enthusiasts will apply additional sound deadening material (like fabric panels, curtains, etc.) on walls to eliminate echos and prevent sound from “bouncing around”. When sounds echo off of untreated (untextured, etc.) walls, they become much harder to localize since they’re no longer “coming from” the original location, but being refl
