Video: Building a Playroom

Want to build your own kinky play space? Not sure what you want, how to go about it, or even if you’ve got the room? In this video I show you around our small but perfectly formed playroom and take you through various things to consider when it comes to making your own.

Transcript and contents are below the video.

Transcript

Opening title

(00:00) Hey I’m Switch London and today I want to talk to you about playrooms.

Introduction

(0:25) So we built this playroom back in early 2019 and before then I gotta say that play was kind of a pain in the arse. If you wanted to have a guy over you really had to plan in advance as to what you wanted to do, because everything was in a completely different room.

So let’s say I want to have a guy over for XYZ, I’d need ten or fifteen different things and I’d need to load them all into a big case, carry up the stairs, open up the kitchen table, laying everything out on the kitchen table nice and neatly so I know where everything is, and then sit down and wait for them to arrive with a nice cup of tea.

When it comes to finally playing with your sub, you can almost invariably guarantee that right in the middle of the horniest moment the one thing you need at that moment is not on that table. Where is it? It’s going to be in your bloody cupboard downstairs, and is it going to be in the first place you look when you dash down to grab it?

No. It’s going to be in the very last, because you didn’t tidy it away properly last time. Then when you can’t find it you give up, come back with something you’re going to pretend you needed, and then continue with the scene knowing the headspace is ruined, knowing that you’re a little bit stressed, and it’s just a bit shit.

And this is what’s great about a playroom, it’s not just a wow factor sort of thing. It really does completely change how you can play. It allows you to be fully flexible, it allows you to change up a scene midway through. If something’s not quite working and you can think of something that’d work better, everything you need to do that second thing is at hand. The way you design your playroom and the choices that you make really allow it to work for you depending on what you want to do.

Scaffold and frames

(2:16) So it’s important to note that size isn’t everything, this playroom works and it’s tiny. I can barely stretch my arms out to show you that much, 2.3m wide by 1.9m. You could fit four of these rooms in our bedroom.

But it still works, and a really core part of why this room works is the scaffold frame. So we’ve built one that is open on the side nearest to the camera at the moment, so you can walk in from the door (which is right behind the camera) and into the playspace and everything is here.

This stuff is from themetalstore.co.uk, there are probably other retailers but they sell all of the metal tubing you could possibly need. This is 42mm, it’s nice and thick, it’s chunky and everything is standardised – so if you’re buying 42, all of the things they’re all 42 as well. It just WORKS.

Thankfully, in my case, we already bought this one pre-made from a friend so we didn’t have to do all working out of what we actually needed. The people at The Metal Store will cut everything to size but you need to design it in the first place in a way that isn’t going to fall over.

I really like the versatility of the metal tubing for a frame, especially because you can add bits on and make it out of the frame as well. So down here we’ve got a fuck machine stand which just comes straight off these bars on the side.

But it might be that you only want to use one for fucking, in which case you might not need to go all out and design a thing like this, you could just buy a pre-built frame.

Playroom features

(03:53) Don’t forget that this is a playroom, it doesn’t have to be like a normal room anymore. Which means you can you take normal room things, and turn them into not-normal playroom things.

For example, the window behind me. Stuck in a shelf, painted it up, put a blind down the back of it, and now instead of window we have a lovely display area for all of the hoods. Keep that lit from above, turn off all the other lights, and it makes a really nice focal point for when you enter the room at the start of a session.

Gridwall and storage

(04:23) Another important consideration that really makes this room work is the use of gridwall, this stuff is all over the room. There’s a panel there, a big long panel down here, and there’s two over there, and one up here. All of this stuff is used to hang everything that could possibly hang, either it’ll hang on its own or it’ll need to sit on a hook.

Not everything can hang on a hook, and at some point you’re going to need some shelves. Whether it’s to stick your hoods on, like I’ve got here on display, or whether it’s something like the thing we’ve got in the corner.

So this is just an Ikea display (shelf) on it at the top you’ve got these little shelves, they’re brilliant and they’re only £6 from B&Q and they contain all of the small things that we use so small padlocks, urethral toys, stuff like that.

And below that we’ve got the butt toys, biggest ones at the front obviously – a few electro toys, vibes and you’ve got the Venus stuff and things like that underneath. Above that there’s a few trays mixed into the gridwall which carry the lubes and the condoms.

It’s a really good use of the space, it’s off to the side out of the way, you can’t trip up over it – you don’t want a shelf in the middle of your room. You might want to get something on wheels so if you don’t have space in the playroom all of the time, you can move it around.

Making your space unique

(05:42) So you’ve built your scaffold, you’ve got a home for your favourite gear, your hoods are on display and you can grab a whip and a gag whenever you want it, brilliant. But is there something missing from your playroom, something that adds a unique touch that reflects the play you like the most?

For me I absolutely love breath control, so I went ahead and built myself this. This is the Lungfucker, and it’s made from parts that were custom made in the Czech Republic by the lovely fetishak.cz and it’s a lot of fun and it’s quite imposing. It’s also in the way when it comes to showing the other thing I really like about this room. So with a silly jump cut it’s gone.

This is the restraint wall, I love this part of the room because it’s so versatile and it takes up very little space. 16 of these wall anchors which you can just get in B&Q, all drilled in with four screws, there’s no way you’re going to yank any of these off the wall. I made a lot of noise when I put it up, and so far they haven’t failed me whatsoever.

It’s really good because it allows you to do such a different variety of bondage stuff from things above high, down to down below, plus chain webs and everything like that.

Painting and lighting

(06:57) The other thing I love about this wall are the marks of struggle, and this is possible because I painted the room light, and this is the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is the colour scheme of your room.

This room is two shades of grey and a vivid yellow for an accent. While a black or very dark playroom immediately packs that attitude, it’s quite hard to lighten the space back up again if you wish to do so. Whereas if you take a light colour you can do what you like with it.

I’ve always liked grey over a coloured tone simply because you know what colour it’s going to be when you add other light to it. So I could just red right now and the wall becomes red, I do it into pinks and blues I get a mix of stuff.

Silly lights aside, if you want to do accent colours then go for it. If you’re a #teamgreen pup then you might want to put a bit of your personality in the room. If you do, do it sparingly – just do some shelf edges a few little corners here and there, and it has a really nice effect.

Soundproofing and flooring

(07:58) The final thing I want to talk around is flooring and soundproofing of the room. This room isn’t soundproofed whatsoever, it can be quite expensive to get decent soundproofing, and the cheap stuff that you might put on the walls might only dampen the sound a little bit. If it can go up and straight through the roofspace into next door, it won’t make a difference how much you put on this wall – so we haven’t bothered putting any at all.

So far we haven’t had any complaints from the neighbours, but we’re pretty sure this backs onto a bedroom so it is a consideration especially if there’s some kids next door, you don’t want to be screaming through the walls.

When it comes to the flooring, we’ve got really basic tiles, the interlocking tiles that keep coming up all the time. They’re a bit of a pain in the arse, but they are functional. Other options, you could go for metal flooring – just remember that that makes a really loud noise. So if you’re alright clanking around, then fine – it IS a pretty horny sound, but if you’ve got neighbours below you or if sound is a concern for any other reason then you’ll probably want to avoid that.

Signoff

(09:01) So that’s about it for this video. Thanks for watching I hope you’ve enjoyed having a look around our playroom, and that you’ve had some great ideas for your own space, whether you decide to be loud and proud about it, or like us – just a little bit more secretive.