Recommendation: How to Build a Sex Room on Netflix

“So you want to build a sex room.”

That’s how interior designer and host Melanie Rose begins most conversations with her clients on the new Netflix show, How to Build a Sex Room. There’s no hemming or hawing, no dancing around the truth. You want a sex room? Then the only thing to do is get down to the nitty gritty of what, exactly, that means for you – and Melanie Rose is ready and more than willing to help you figure it out.

A “sex room” surely sounds like a strange concept to a lot of people, probably even a frivolous or selfish one. After all, I can hear you thinking, isn’t that what a bedroom is for? Sex rooms must just be for nymphomaniacs and sex addicts, right? But I challenge you to watch one episode of How to Build a Sex Room, and see if you don’t come away with a different opinion.

Whether Melanie Rose is helping a long-married couple reignite their sexual spark, making the dreams of a polyamorous group of lovers come true, or helping a newly-single middle-aged woman discover the thrill of picking out her first vibrator–purely for her own pleasure–How to Build a Sex Room is wonderfully sex-positive and progressive. Not only that, but it’s a truly joyous exploration of the many different forms a fulfilling sex life can take, while also incorporating some good sex and kink education.

After watching the entire season (while down and out with a nasty case of covid, ugh), I found myself yearning for my own sex room – a place devoted entirely to pleasure and devoid of all the clutter and distractions of daily life. It’s not in the cards for me and my little apartment at the moment, but it did make me think more about how I can improve the vibes and comfort in my own bedroom. And that is the real gift of How to Build a Sex Room: It gently suggests that we all reflect on our own sex lives, and give ourselves permission to truly invest in that fundamental part of ourselves that all too often falls to the wayside as we get older, or have kids, to make room for other, “more important” things.

Melanie Rose gives you permission to care about your orgasm, and that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

You can watch How to Build a Sex Room exclusively on Netflix. (Top image via Netflix.)