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One writer draws inspiration from Netflix's How to Build a Sex Room to create one of her own, and the results will have you sweating. 🥵
“What are you watching?” my husband asked as I stared at the TV open-mouthed. On the screen, a delightful-looking English woman was showing an everyday couple how to use a long, tasseled flogger. With each smack, my husband inched closer, as mesmerized as I was. Together, we watched in awe as that same woman then transformed the couple’s unused basement into a full-on sexual escape in Netflix’s How to Build a Sex Room. It was right around the time the credits rolled that my husband and I decided to make a DIY sex room of our very own.
In case you somehow managed to miss Netflix's new series, let me explain. How to Build a Sex Room is part home reno, part sexual education. Host (and famed interior designer) Melanie Rose transforms rooms in everyday folks’ homes into beautifully erotic spaces to explore pleasure and push their sexual boundaries. Along the way, she introduces them to new kinks and techniques that'll further enhance their sexperience.
While I’m no stranger to exploring different types of sex in my relationship—from roleplaying TV show characters to using mouth-watering mints for oral sex, my hubs and I have tried a lot—I’d never actually spent the time to make our place especially sexy. That’s why the idea of a sex room was so intriguing. I mean, you get a gorgeous space and great sex? Count me TF in. And after watching a grand total of one episode, my husband—whose idea of interior style might still be putting an American flag on the wall à la college—agreed it was time to carve out a sex space of our very own. Here’s how it went down without the help of the entire team at Netflix.
Watching the series, the one thing that was majorly different between the people on the show and myself was their living situation. Even in the most cramped of spaces, the couples getting these sex room makeovers had something to work with—a large ensuite primary bedroom, a porch, or land they could plop a literal BDSM shed down on. Me? I have a 1,000 square-foot house that can’t hold my shoes, let alone a sex swing.
That’s why we decided that our (very small) bedroom would have to become our sex room. The problem is that our primary literally consists of the king-sized bed my husband insisted upon when we moved in together, two bedside tables…and that’s it. That’s all that can fit. Since we couldn’t exactly install a spanking bench or sexy lounge area, simply upping the eroticism of the space we had would have to suffice.
First, we spent a little time organizing and cleaning the space, which is Rose’s number one to-do when designing a sex room. Since we have approximately three things in our room, it didn’t take long to sort through all the junk that had accumulated in our bedside drawers, strip our dirty sheets, and take the few random coats out of our teeny closet (tossing them in the office to “get to later”, ofc). The last step was to take down our mounted TV. Hard as it was, the idea was that we’d feel more inclined to connect when we went to bed, instead of just throwing on Netflix and falling asleep to the glow of Stranger Things.
The next step in the sex room creation process is testing your sexual boundaries to see what sort of kinks you might have sizzling below the surface. In the series, Rose takes her clients to different outings—such as a dominatrix's dungeon or a shibari rope tying workshop—to help to broaden their horizons. From there, she uses what the couple gravitated toward when designing the room.
Since my husband and I didn’t have a lovely English woman to guide our sexual journey, we decided to simply make a date night out of perusing some virtual sex shops and reading articles about things like BDSM style sex, impact play, and temperature play. We took turns talking about fantasies, why different toys turned us on, and even spanked each other with a wooden spoon, just to see what it was like (highly recommend, btw).
After two bottles of wine and a whole lot of giggling, we decided on items that aided our everyday sex (like quality vibrators and cock rings), a few sexy ‘fits for me, some bondage accessories, and a variety of sex pillows that would elevate (literally) our sex life and could all be easily be stored in our bedroom. Granted, in a dream world, Netflix’s sexual fairy godmother would have taken over and done all of this for us, but we work with what we have, people!
Once our blank bedroom canvas was ready and our sex toy order was in, it was time to make the teeny tiny space worthy of wild, uninhibited hookups. Again, since there wasn’t really room (both literally and financially) to add in Melanie Rose classics like a sitting area or fireplace, we had to get super creative with the small square footage.
First, I hung up a curtain of twinkle lights that covered the entire wall behind our bed to give the space a très romantic ambiance. Then, I installed some blackout curtains over our windows to make middle-of-the-day sex a lil moodier. Finally, I replaced the old mismatched runners that sat along both sides of our bed with matching white faux fur ones, and I pulled out the luxe, Kailu bedding set I got for Christmas and hadn’t yet used because hi, it’s raw silk. But since silk = sexy, I figured now was the perfect time.
Once all of our sexual goodies arrived, we spent an afternoon meticulously organizing everything. The vibrators went in my top bedside drawer, the blindfolds and handcuffs went in his. I put my new sex wedge pillow on the bed along with a few other ultra-soft throws. We installed some inconspicuous velcro, under-the-bed restraints, and I hung up all my lingerie in the closet, so when you opened the doors, all you saw was sexy lace and luscious satin. With a scattering of tea light candles, a few spritzes of my wedding perfume in the air, and the blackout curtains drawn, we were officially in business.
In the show, the couple doesn’t actually do the decorating work, so unlike them, we already knew exactly what the space would look like. Still, we didn’t want to just waltz into our brand spanking new sex room and get down to it. We needed a little foreplay–a little razzle-dazzle—to up the drama of the moment. That’s why we decided to first, turn off our phones and sit down to a nice, candle-lit dinner together. We chatted about our days, all the work we put into our sex room, and what we were most excited to try. By the time we were loading the dishwasher, we were already eager for the evening’s ~activities~.
Post-meal, we hopped into a steamy shower and took our time soaping each other up. We weren’t even in the sex room yet, but the idea of it was already making us both giddy. So giddy, that by the time we donned our fluffy robes and entered our space, my body was already humming with anticipation.
Maybe it was the wine with dinner or all the sudsy rubbing, but walking into the sex room was like entering a different realm. The blackout curtains eliminated distractions like headlights and lamp posts, and the twinkling curtain behind our bed gave the entire room a fairytale-like quality. The soft fur rugs caressed our toes while the scent from our wedding pulled us into a romantic stupor. We perused the lingerie closet together and chose a strappy leather set from Honey Birdette for me to wiggle into. My husband sat on the bed and watched as I slipped it on, his breath catching as I bent over to pull up my panties. His hands were already on me by the time I fastened the bra.
We fell back on the silk sheets together, the soft material like butter against my clean skin. Everything felt extra—the outfit, the bedding, the lighting. It was like my senses were heightened, electrified. It didn’t seem like this was the room we crawl into every night and pass out in. It felt more sacred—more sexual.
My husband reached over and grabbed a blindfold out of his BDSM drawer while I propped my hips up with my new Liberator Wedge. Before slipping the eye mask over my face, he motioned to the under-the-bed restraints—something completely new for the both of us. I nodded, and the last thing I saw was his smirk as he secured the blindfold over my eyes.
He restrained my arms first, asking to make sure I was comfortable before moving down to my ankles. I’d never had my legs tied down and, ahem, open, and the feeling was completely foreign in a good way. My pulse drummed in my ears as he slid his fingers up past my knees, over my pelvis, and between my breasts, causing me to convulse. His mouth made its way between my thighs, and I was already well on my way to an orgasm. By the time he climbed on top and entered me, I was already close to my second.
We spend the rest of the evening taking turns testing out different toys, trying positions that we were now far more comfortable with thanks to the assistance of sex pillows, and getting in lots of aftercare, cuddling and chatting before falling asleep in each other’s arms. The next day? We did it all over again.
Going into this experiment, I knew my sex room would look different than the ones on the show. Without professional designers and a production budget, my husband and I were pretty limited. That said, simply turning our bedroom into a more erotically-charged space (which is likely what most people would be more capable of doing) had a much greater effect on our connection than I ever expected.
Our sex room has given us a place to explore and strengthen our bond, whether that’s just by chatting distraction-free on our silky sheets or going full BDSM with handcuffs and a flogger. By making the room a little less every day and a little more erotic, it’s significantly easier to leave our usual stressors like work or family at the door and simply indulge with each other when we climb into bed.
In a dream world, a full-on sex room—complete with a St. Andrew’s cross and lavish soaking tub—would be ideal. But until Melanie Rose decides to knock on my door with some tea, vibrators, and blueprints, our fairy light-covered space will have to do. Considering the number of orgasms my new sex room has already given me so far, I’m not exactly complaining.