How to Build a Sex Room
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Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A British designer builds play rooms for American couples; kink as home improvement.
How to Build a Sex Room is a home-renovation series with one difference: every room is built for sex. Its host, the London-born designer Melanie Rose, says she has been designing such rooms for about ten years. The single season of eight episodes, released in July 2022, was filmed in Denver with local clients, eleven couples and one single woman. Each episode moves between two projects. Rose looks at the space on offer, then sits the clients down and asks what they enjoy and what they would like to try, opening a bag of sex toys to get them talking. She takes some of them to bondage workshops and boudoir photographers, and each project ends with the reveal of the finished room.
Taylor and Ajay want a rock 'n' roll room in a basement reached by a steep ladder. Raj and Ryan get a suite that joins Raj's bohemian taste to Ryan's love of technology, and Rose uses blindfolds to help them talk; Hannah and Wesley get a basement shower built for sex. Orlando and Matthew, who live apart, want a room with a view; Shenika and Matthew, whose marriage kept its love but lost its intimacy after children, want that intimacy back. Lester and Soriya's seven-member polyamorous family gets a dungeon. Meaghan and Dave get a spa, and Dave uses the project to propose. The burlesque performers Bettie and Brody get an art deco room with a tub and a stage; the first-time homeowners Ouima and Jesse, a cabaret lounge; the high-school sweethearts Tricia and Gary, a shed on their farm, because their bedroom is too small; Heather and Sara, a new bed and a sex swing in the van they live in. The last client is Lisa, a stand-up comedian, who wants a room for her single life. Netflix later reported that Meaghan and Dave had married, Orlando and Matthew had moved in together, and Lisa had met someone during filming.
Starring
Melanie RoseHost
A London-born, Los Angeles-based designer who has specialised in sex rooms for about a decade, and who gets clients talking with a bag of toys.
MeaghanParticipant
Wants a room like a five-star spa with Dave, who proposes to Meaghan during the project.
DaveParticipant
Meaghan's partner, who enlists Rose's help to propose; Netflix later reported that the two had married.
LesterParticipant
Soriya's boyfriend and, with her, the anchor of a seven-member polyamorous family that asks Rose for a dungeon.
SoriyaParticipant
Lester's girlfriend and the family's other anchor; their room is designed for the whole polyamorous group rather than one couple.
LisaParticipant
A Denver stand-up comedian and the series' only single client, who wants a room for a life of her own.
Why it matters
How to Build a Sex Room borrows the most domestic format on television, the home makeover, and uses it to open the one room such shows leave shut. The borrowing does real work. A couple asking for a spa or a basement conversion is easier to watch than a couple asking for help with desire, and Rose says the furniture is really a way to get people talking about sex without feeling judged. Her clients are Denver residents rather than performers: parents who have drifted apart, a polyamorous family of seven, a couple living in a van, a comedian designing a room for herself alone. The show treats sex as something a household can plan for, budget for and make space for, which may be the least romantic idea imaginable or the most honest one. It leaves open whether a room can change what happens between people, or only give it somewhere to happen.