How to Travel with BDSM Toys

All of your “kinky accessories” are safely stored in their storage at home, but what happens when you want to take them with you on a trip? Whether you’re going to a hotel takeover or just trying to surprise a lover with a kinky romantic hotel weekend trip, knowing how to travel with BDSM toys is surprisingly important.

This is for a few reasons:

• Discretion: You probably don’t want to let everyone you see know what you’re doing in the bedroom. Hiding your sex toys when you take them out of the bedroom is how to do that.
• Legality: Depending on where you live and where you’re traveling, some BDSM toys (and sex toys!) may be illegal or construed as weapons. In a worst-case scenario, being photographed with BDSM gear could be used against you in a custody battle and similar legal battles.
• Consent: If you’re traveling to a place where housekeeping is a thing, traveling with easy storage ensures your housekeeper doesn’t easily come kink gear. While housekeepers have seen a lot of things in their time, don’t expose them to even more when you have an easy way to avoid it. (Plus, this means someone else won’t touch your gear, getting their germs on it.)
• Theft: Kinky items can be expensive. Obviously traveling with high-value items can lead to you not having those items anymore. You’d think it’d be weird to steal a bag full of sex toys, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone has to replace their full toy bag due to theft.

So, let’s talk about how to travel with BDSM toys and sex toys to keep them discreetly hidden, easy to access, and easy to move around.

ABSOLUTE NUMBER 1 THING TO KNOW

This is in capital letters because it is insanely important:

Some countries consider some BDSM toys to be weapons. It may be illegal – and potentially lead to arrest – to attempt to take some of your toys into their country.

At best, you’re regarded with more suspicion and they take your toy.

At worst, you may be taken into custody. If you’re able to be released, you may be faced with high fines.

We know what we do is consensual fun. That doesn’t mean that some of the implements we use aren’t used for violence and unwanted injuries in other circumstances.

How to Travel with BDSM Toys: Make Sure It Meets This Criteria

So before you choose to take your BDSM toy on a new adventure, make sure it passes some basic criteria:

• Could this be actually marketed as a weapon or kidnapping device in non-kink spaces? (Stun guns, sap gloves, zip ties, etc.)
• Does it look threatening or like it could be used as a weapon?
• Would you be okay if this toy was taken from you or you lost it?

Your toy needs to look non-threatening, not be an actual weapon, and be something you’re okay losing. Anytime you take your BDSM toys outside of your house, something could happen to it. (Even if it’s something as benign as an open bottle of shampoo leaking and ruining the leather)

How to Travel with BDSM Toys if You’re Leaving the Country

Making sure you have all of your ducks in a row is even more important if you’re leaving the country. Since you’ll go through customs security, someone will likely be picking apart your bag for anything that looks like a weapon. You get it. A country doesn’t want people coming into their space with weapons.

If possible, choose methods of travel between countries that have lower levels of security. If you’re traveling from the United States to Canada, for example, driving across the border has a much lower level of security than taking a flight. If you’re in Europe, you may find the same thing with trains or buses versus flying.

Never take BDSM toys on an international trip where you aren’t familiar with the security and customs process. This leaves too many variables to plan around.

If you have to take BDSM toys with you on international trips, make sure that they look like sex toys. Choose your pink, fluffy flogger instead of the one made with barbed wire. The pink one might still get confiscated, but you’re more likely to be met with embarrassment from the agent instead of instant assumption that you’re a hit man.

And most importantly, know the laws where you’re going. Some countries have laws against owning various “weapons”. Other countries even have laws against owning sex toys. Make sure you know what is and isn’t allowed in any place where you’re traveling.

How to Travel with BDSM Toys If You’re Driving In Your Own Country

If you don’t have to leave the country or let a customs or boarding agent look through your bags, you’re less likely to have an issue.

However, “less likely” isn’t “risk-free”. If you’re pulled over for a routine traffic stop and “weapons” are spotted in your car, this can still be legally dangerous for you.

If you are particularly concerned about law enforcement, Attorney Lady Steele recommends ensuring all of your toybags are opaque, in the trunk, and affixed with locks to close them. While I do not know about the legality, her classes on BDSM and the Law have noted that this requires a higher layer of permission to search than simply having them tossed in the trunk or in a see-through bag.

Aside from the legality of things, keeping anything that looks like it might have value is generally recommended to avoid car break-ins. Plus, once you reach your destination, you’ll still have to tote your toys inside the building, so it just makes sense to carry all of your gear already nicely packaged up in your luggage.

How to Travel with BDSM Toys If You’re Going to a Hotel Takeover

This is a trick question header entirely brought on by how I’ve seen fellow kinksters traveling to hotel takeovers.

Your toys should never be visible when traveling to any kink event. All of kink relies upon flying under the radar, and no hotel wants to be known as “the place the weird people with cuffs go”. That’s what closes down hotel takeovers.

If anything, when you’re attending a kink event, your toys should be hidden even better than usual. If you, alone, walk through the hotel lobby of a random hotel on a romantic getaway carrying a collar, that’s just weird. Whatever. The average bystander will think you’re a weirdo.

But if 30 people walk through a hotel lobby carrying a collar, that’s a pattern, and it will cause other nearby people to start looking around and wonder what’s happening.

In the age we’re in, maintaining our privacy and hotel contracts is of utmost importance, and you should never do anything to jeopardize that.

If you’re going to be a BDSM hotel takeover, you might also be traveling with way more toys than you usually would. They may not all just fit into the bottom of your usual travel duffel. Consider some of the larger-form storage options below, packing an entire bag of “just” kink toys if you know you need to travel heavier for a BDSM scene you have planned.

How to Hide Your Toys

“Okay,” you say. “I’m down to keep them private. But how do I keep some of these toys private? They’re stupidly shaped.”

Yep, you’re not wrong.

A lot of BDSM toys are oddly-shaped, and this can make it even harder to hide them properly.

My recommendations:

Look for Storage Cases Sold by the Manufacturer

If your toy is popular or particularly-awkwardly-shaped, the manufacturer may sell a case for it. That’s exactly what’s up with the Motorbunny. A extra-large, powerhouse of a sex machine with bondage points built in, the Motorbunny is awkward and heavy to carry around.

So Motorbunny offers multiple types of storage options, including this wheel-around case. They also have backpack designs and ultra-sturdy metal storage box options.

The Motorbunny logo is removable. Once you do that, it just looks like traveling with boring, ol’ wheeled luggage.

For unique items like sex furniture or a sex machine, purchasing manufacturer-specific travel luggage is your best case scenario. You can DIY your own options, but for expensive or awkwardly-shaped items, this can be your best mixture of protection and portability.

Use Extra-Large Upright Rolling Luggage

Rolling luggage is easier to “carry”. If it’s upright, it also has the added benefit of allowing you to “hang” delicate objects with the assumption that the luggage will stay in the same orientation. (i.e., hang your floggers off the top of the rolling carrier, and the floggers can “dangle” inside of the rolling luggage during transit).

Keep the luggage’s orientation in mind while packing. Heavy objects should sit at the bottom. If your riding crops or paddles fit, they can be strapped up against the sides of the luggage to keep them out of the way.

Use Shipping/Poster Tubes

If you head to the local office supplies store, poster tubes are perfect for hiding long, slender objects like riding crops or canes.

They also can be used to store ultra-important floggers away from other materials or heavy objects that may crush the tails of your toy.

If anyone asks, you just have to present your posters at a business meeting later. ;)

(Need something easier to carry? Art students have been toting around poster tubes like its their job for forever. There are tons of reusable poster tubes with straps out there that can make this process even more seamless.)

Purchase Luggage Organizer Bags

“Luggage” organization bags can be super useful here. Toss all these bags, of different shapes and colors, into your overall duffel, and you can still identify what you need at a moment’s glance.

You can know the small, square-shaped one carries your gags while the yellow rectangle has your cuffs.

Sex toys can also be stored this way, allowing you to keep the toys – and their chargers – together while simultaneously reducing how much lint or fuzz the toys might collect from the remnants of your leather gear.

Hide Gear in Hanging Clothing Bags

Y’know, if you don’t have anything else, you can hang your awkwardly-shaped toys on a hanger and hang them inside of a zipped up hanging clothing bag. This allows your floggers to drape safely and hides your riding crops or canes inside of a long, opaque bag.

Just make sure your hanging clothing bag has a bag that zips up around it. The last thing you want is for a flogger to accidentally become unhooked during transport and fall out of the bottom onto the hotel’s lobby floor.

Alternatively, if you aren’t afraid of looking a bit dingy, you can poke holes in the middle of the bottom of a trash bag for hangers to fit through. Pull-tight (or knot) the “opening” of the trash bag (which is now underneath all of your clothing) to provide a cinch to keep items from falling out.

(If You Have To) Use Toolboxes

There’s this weird trend at play parties for kinksters (it’s always male dominants. Always.) to bring their sex toys in straight-up rolling toolboxes from the hardware store. While they’re technically “hidden” during transit, it’s also really weird to bring a waist-height mechanic’s toolbox to stay at a hotel.

This, however, can work – especially if it’s really important to you that you have small containers or other dividers to keep all of your gear from mixing around together.

On a smaller scale, for kinksters who do things like needle play, I’ve seen them bring a fishing tackle box or small toolbox that can be packed inside the rest of their luggage. This offers the organizational wins without the toolbox vibe.

Updated: December 2025.