Setting and space

Almost nobody writes about the room. Then they discover that the single biggest constraint on what they can do at home is not skill or nerve or equipment, it is whether the woman in the flat below can hear it.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

People plan the scene in enormous detail and then hold it in whichever room they happen to be standing in. That is backwards. The room decides how loud you can be, which positions are available, whether either of you can relax, and how likely it is that the whole thing gets interrupted by a man delivering a parcel. None of what follows requires buying anything. It is about looking at rooms you already have with a different question in mind.

What each room actually offers

The living room is where most of this happens, and it is usually right. It has the sofa, it has floor space, it tends to be the warmest room, and it is the one furthest from the neighbours in a lot of terraced houses. The drawback is windows onto the street and a door that other people in the house walk through.

The bedroom is the obvious choice and slightly overrated. A mattress absorbs everything, so anyone lying flat on a bed is being hit through a surface that takes half the force and gives nothing back. What the bedroom does have is a door that locks without comment, a duvet, and somewhere to be afterwards, which is worth more than people think. Some couples also find that the room they sleep in is the wrong room for this and cannot say why.

The kitchen has the best surfaces and the worst floor. A solid table at the right height is genuinely useful. Tiles are unforgiving on knees and elbows and they bounce sound around, and the kitchen is very often the room that backs onto next door.

The stairs are a British classic for a reason, since bending over the fourth step puts everything at a workable height. They are also the noisiest place in the building, directly under the bedrooms, and there is nowhere to put your feet. I would use them once for the novelty and not build anything around them.

Furniture that works

The arm of a sofa is the best thing in most homes. Roughly hip height, padded, wide enough to take weight, and it holds the position so nobody has to concentrate on staying still. Put a cushion on it. Someone leaning over a sofa arm can stay there comfortably for twenty minutes, which is not true of most other options.

A dining chair with no arms is the other one worth having. Over the knee needs a seat with nothing at the sides, and the arms of an armchair make it impossible. Straight backed, solid legs, no wheels. The same chair turned round and knelt on facing the back is a good position for a strap.

A bed works better if the person is at the edge with their feet on the floor and their hips over the mattress edge rather than sunk into the middle.

What does not work: office chairs, anything on castors, anything that swivels, folding chairs, breakfast bars that are too high and too narrow, and the arm of a wingback chair that tips the moment weight goes on it.

Move the coffee table before you start, particularly if it has a glass top. Look up as well, because a cane needs a clear arc, and I have taken a lampshade off its fitting mid-stroke in a low-ceilinged flat, which ended the evening more effectively than any safe word.

Noise, which nobody mentions and everybody should

This is the practical constraint that decides more than anything else, and it is the reason people who imagine themselves doing something severe end up doing something quiet instead.

Impact sound through a party wall carries less than people fear. Impact through a floor carries much more, so the flat below hears things the flat next door does not. Voices carry further than either. And an open window in July puts a cane stroke into three gardens, which is a mistake you only make once.

Implements differ enormously. A bare hand is loud, which surprises people. A cane is a crack with a high frequency that cuts through walls and is recognisably not furniture being moved.

A thick leather strap or a heavy suede paddle is a dull thud that reads as somebody dropping something. Cloth over the skin, knickers or pyjama bottoms, takes a noticeable amount of the sound out. If noise is your constraint, choose leather over rattan and accept that this shapes what you can do. See implements for what each one delivers.

Other things that help: a rug or a folded duvet on the floor, standing away from the shared wall, and timing. A Tuesday afternoon when the terrace is at work is quieter than a Saturday night when everyone is at home listening for something to be annoyed about. Music does not mask it. The frequencies are wrong and you have added a second reason for someone to knock.

Interruptions

Lock the door if there is a lock. If there is not, and there are other adults in the house, agree the arrangement beforehand rather than trusting to luck.

Phones face down, silent, and not on vibrate, because a phone buzzing against a wooden table is loud and it pulls both of you straight out. Doorbells are the classic ruin, especially the video ones that also announce themselves on a phone. A delivery does not need answering. Smart speakers are worth muting if only for your own peace of mind.

Pets need to be shut out beforehand, not during. Dogs react to the sound and to somebody they love being held down, and a distressed dog scratching at the door will end the scene as surely as anything. Cats will simply arrive.

Hotel rooms

Hotels solve several problems at once. Nobody interrupts, nothing has to be tidied away, and neither person has to give out an address, which matters if you are meeting somebody new. The room is neutral, and for some people that neutrality is exactly right.

The trade-offs are real. Budget chain walls are thin and your neighbour has a phone and no reason to be tolerant. Staff exist. You cannot choose the furniture, and a lot of hotel rooms hold nothing but a bed, a desk chair on wheels and a wall, so check before committing to a plan that needs a sofa arm. And a hotel is not a first meeting. That is coffee, in public, for the reasons set out in meeting safely.

Temperature

Warm the room twenty minutes before. Cold skin hurts more, bruises more readily and is less forgiving of everything, and somebody undressed and standing still gets cold faster than the person moving around. The temperature drop afterwards is real and shivering is common even in a reasonable room, which is why aftercare starts with a blanket rather than a conversation.

Why the ordinary room is usually better

There is a version of this where people build a room for it. Red lights, a bench, implements hung on a wall. If that is what you want, it is a fine thing to want, but for most of what this site is about, I think it works against you.

A great deal of the appeal here is domestic. A hairbrush, a dining chair, a hallway. The ordinariness of the setting is doing work that a purpose-built room actively removes, because a dungeon announces that this is a performance and a sitting room does not. The first time someone is put over the arm of the sofa they sat on that morning tends to land harder than anything involving equipment.

There is a duller argument too. Anything that has to be set up gets used less. A cane behind the wardrobe is used more often than a frame that takes fifteen minutes to assemble, and the arrangement that survives a year is the one that fits into an ordinary Tuesday evening.