Apartment living can be awesome. After all, you don’t usually have to pay for repairs, and you get the flexibility to move a whole lot easier than if you owned a home. Plus, apartments usually mean you don’t have to keep up the yard, and you can mostly just deal with your own little space. And apartment sex is way easier than when you share a house with others.
At the same time, apartments have their downsides. It pretty much means sharing close living quarters with people in other apartments. In many cases, you may share two or more walls with neighbors, and when you’re sharing walls, that also means that you might be sharing noise.
Turns out, a lot of neighbors don’t necessarily like hearing apartment sex from people they only pass once or twice a week.
Plus, apartment living means that people may be in your living space regularly (whether to tour the place or just to fix something).
So, let’s talk about ways to keep your apartment sex to yourself – and try to ensure your neighbors don’t hear or see anything that’s going to become a complaint with the building manager.
Get a Lay of the Land
First things first.
Get a general idea of how much you can hear from your neighbors. If you can easily hear loud conversations, you should be prepared to put more effort into keeping things quiet. If you never hear a peep from them, though (and are even unsure if the apartment is occupied), then taking steps to reduce your noise may not be such a high priority.
Don’t forget to run tests through the front door, too. Have a trusted friend stand out in the common hallways while you talk and make noise on the other side of the door. Especially if your living room is a common fucking spot, you might find that more sound makes it out into the common area than you’d assume. (Doors can be surprisingly useless at blocking sound!) You may need to add a door stop or door curtain to help prevent noise leaking from the entrance to your apartment.
If you’re someone who loves the windows open, recreate all of these experiments with the window open as well. Especially if you live somewhere with amazing temperatures (I’m jealous), you’ll want to know how much sound comes out the window. You might find that your bedroom moans from across the house definitely carry through the open living room window!
This also includes turning on the lights at night and leaving the blinds open to determine if neighbors can see into your apartment. You may wish to prioritize closing the blinds at night if you’re bringing someone home – even if you don’t expect to be naked in the kitchen.
If you’re hoping to enjoy some BDSM play on your balcony, repeat the same experiments outside. How far does sound carry when you’re simply talking? What about when you’re trying to be quiet and whisper? How much can people see of your bodies when you’re on the balcony?
Apartment Sex Defense: Create Confusing Noise
Your first line of defense can be trying to mask the sounds of sex. This means playing the television or playing music. I personally prefer music as I find TV to be distracting.
The idea here is to make it harder for your neighbors to hear any distinct noises or words – not to drown out the screaming spanking session you’re doing. Loud noises, whether they’re from sex or the latest movie release, are still grounds for a noise complaint. Make sure to keep your “cover-up” noise at a reasonable volume as well.
Do be aware: Making this noise may not be as “discreet” as you think it is. If you’re constantly popping on a loud playlist of music at 11PM, your neighbor is going to very quickly figure out what’s going on.
To make it even more fun, you can make a “Sexy Time” playlist together that you always play. Hearing songs off it can get you unexpectedly turned on – even during other times of the day.
Apartment Sex Privacy: Pick the Best Room
You might also try to move your activities to another room. If your bedroom happens to be right next to a shared wall, try having sex in the kitchen. If a specific corner of your bedroom is right under the shared HVAC piping, consider moving your bed to the opposing side of the room for a simple, discreet swap.
If you’re using these tips for a hotel stay with a partner or Washington escorts, this can be as simple as using the bed furthest away from the door.
For the kinky people among us, having portable sex furniture can make this easier. A bondage board, for example, allows you to take a full set of bondage points anywhere in your home. Tether straps allow you to “tie” your partner to any surface.
Plus, if you bring a new sex partner home, you’ll automatically score points for being creative with sex.
Invest in Discreet Sex Furniture
If you’ve started dabbling with the fun of sex furniture, I don’t have to tell you how enjoyable it can be.
However, it can also be some of the hardest sex-related items to hide. After all, it’s the sex equivalent of trying to hide your living room couch versus the TV remote.
If you go into your sex furniture adventure while in an apartment, try to purchase sex furniture that can be broken down when it isn’t in use. Yes, a pile of metal pipes is super weird in the bedroom, but I promise that a gigantic St. Andrew’s Cross will be even weirder to your complex manager.
If your furniture can’t break down, you might consider keeping a storage space for them under the bedframe or in a nearby closet. You don’t have to move them there often, but packing the closet with the expectation of needing to take items out at a later date to fit your sex furniture can be helpful.
At a bare minimum, you can toss a blanket or sheet over any offending furniture, but don’t expect that to look particularly “discreet” for a home walkthrough.
Apartment Sex Defense: Soundproofing
If you’re someone who lives for the sound of your partner’s screams, you might need to invest in some soundproofing. For others, the cost and time associated with soundproofing may sound like overkill. (And unless you’re going for recording studio levels of noise reduction, you’ll still be looking at sound deadening instead of proofing.)
I’m not going to pretend I’ve ever soundproofed a room for BDSM. I haven’t. A few friends who wanted the freedom of loud, uninhibited kink play anytime they wanted, however, have done so.
Here are some easy resources for soundproofing your bedroom if you want to go down this path:
A Simple Back-Up: Keep It Quiet
If those methods don’t appeal to you, you might consider trying to keep quiet during sex. Turn it into a game – you’ll be surprised how sexy it can be to try and avoid making noise when the two of you are usually pretty vocal. This can be especially fun if you have thinner walls and can hear someone in the next room. It tends to bring out the exhibitionist in most of us. Mouth gags can even make it all kinky.
“Keeping it quiet” may also involve changing up your gear. Chains make a lot more noise than nylon straps. Mental bondage makes even less noise. Your wand massager will be louder than a bullet vibrator.
Staying quiet may also involve a different selection of kinks. If you know that enema play brings out screams of pleasure, it might be left off the table until the neighbor’s car isn’t in the driveway. If omorashi, diaper, or forced feminization are kinks you know you both can do at whisper-quiet levels, those might be the kinks that are always on the table.
A Second Back-Up: Leave the Apartment
Depending on where you live, how close the apartments are, and how devastating it would be for your neighbors to learn about your kink/sex life, it may simply not be possible to enjoy loud sex/kink in your apartment. This can especially be the case if you’re living with your family or live with coworkers (like on a military base).
If that’s the case, you might consider leaving some of your louder activities for play outside your apartment home. You can still enjoy your quieter, softer activities at home, but choose to avoid activities that bring out your inner animal until you’re in a place where it would be allowed.
This could be places like:
- Your vehicle parked somewhere you can legally have sex (like in your garage; vehicles are surprisingly soundproofed!)
- A local play party that will allow you to scream/fuck as loud as you want
- A local by-the-hour hotel room that will allow for easy lunch quickies – and a lot more noise
- An overnight visit to a local hotel room; look for weekday availability to drastically cut the price
- Outdoors in places that wouldn’t be illegal; use your judgment and assess your risk profile for those
Don’t Overthink It
If you live in an apartment, hearing some of your neighbor’s noise is probably a given. It’s one of the downsides of apartment living that we all accept when we move into an apartment.
That means it might be easier to simply accept that your neighbors might hear the accidental moan sometimes. You know you’ve heard some of their apartment sex.
At the same time, make sure to be respectful. Your moaning may be interrupting your neighbor’s only few hours of sleep during this week’s 70 hour work week. The loud “thump” of tossing your partner onto the bed for your BDSM scene might have just awoken their finally-asleep newborn.
Remember, we’re all in this “apartment living” thing together. Try to enjoy your own space, but try to be respectful of the fact that other people are trying to live their lives in this space too.
This could include:
- Only doing your louder activities when you think your neighbors aren’t home.
- Trying to do most of your louder kink/sex activities during the normal daylight hours.
- Talking to your neighbors to find out when their quiet hours are. If they have a newborn, work from home, or work 3rd shift, their preferred quiet hours may not match the stereotypical 9PM to 8AM.
- Accepting a request for quiet graciously (when reasonable) and asking what times/suggestions would work better for them. You may find out that sound travels really well from your bathroom and a simple swap to the bedroom solves everything.
Apartment Sex Storage: Think About It
As a final thought, don’t forget to create back-up plans for when people tour your apartment. Whether you want to move out soon or the building maintenance is coming in for their annual fire alarm inspection, it’s inevitable that someone else will need access to your apartment.
You can use your standard sex toy and kink storage methods:
- Your closet
- Under the bed
- A discreet box/container in any space
- Hiding items behind a full row of books on a bookshelf
- Kitchen cabinets or cupboards
- Bedroom drawers
If you prefer to keep your sex toys and kink gear accessible for 24/7 play, you don’t necessarily need to hide your items all of the time. You simply need to have a storage plan in place for when the complex manager or maintenance needs to access your place.
Make sure to know where your kink gear is though. Most US jurisdictions only require 24-hours notice to access your apartment for non-emergency needs. Depending on your schedule, this may only give you a few minutes to do a final run-through and ensure no obvious items are sitting out. Get into a habit of checking your most-common areas and try to avoid leaving sex toys outside of it.
Originally Published: September 24, 2013.
Updated: October 2023, August 2023, May 2023, March 2023.
