Cold Play or Fire Play?
Temperature play is the use of heat and cold to provide or enhance sexual stimulation. It can be a really exciting way to spice up your sex routine. By involving totally new senses you can discover completely new erogenous zones on your body and new things that might turn you on and it’s just generally a really fun thing to explore!
You can use hot or cold to engage in forms of temperature play. These can be achieved by actual warm and cold objects, or through chemical reactions, such as warming lubes and cooling lubes. There are even condoms that have some of these lubes pre-applied to them so all you need to do is put them on and enjoy the ride.
How to get started with temperature play
If you want to incorporate temperature play into your sex life there are some simple basics you can start with. Whether it is grabbing a bowl of ice or warm wax, here are some easy methods to get you started.
1. Ice cubes
You don’t really need any equipment to start experimenting with temperature play, you can just get a few ice cubes from the freezer and start playing with ice. Simply hold the ice between your fingers and let the ice water drip onto your partner’s body.
Put an ice cube in your mouth, and let it cool your mouth and tongue down a little bit. Give sensual kisses on your partner’s neck, suck a bit on their earlobes and venture down towards their nipples.
You can even let the ice cube touch their skin, then suck it back into your mouth and continue exploring. You can give blow jobs with ice cubes or cunnilingus with ice cubes and give your partner a whole new experience when it comes to oral sex.
2. Warm liquids
You can also utilize heat in your sensual play! Just warm your mouth with a hot beverage. Tea works well, just make sure it’s plain tea without any sugar, honey, milk, or anything like that because those can easily promote a yeast infection.
Follow the above tips and go exploring your partner’s body! Take turns, and see how many of your erogenous zones match and how many you have that differ. Do all of your erogenous zones respond to both heat and cold, or are there any that only like one or the other?
IMPORTANT!
3. Sex toys for temperature play
You can use most sex toys for temperature play, but be careful with toys that have electronics inside them and always follow their users’ guide. Silicone toys can be cooled down and heated up, but they don’t conduct heat that well so your best bet for temperature play are metal and glass dildos.
A big advantage of metal and glass toys is that they are relatively cheap. They also look great, are extremely easy to clean, retain temperature, and don’t retain any odors. Use a cold or warm toy to explore your partner’s body just as you did with the ice cube.
Gently touch the toy to different areas on their body and see their reactions. You can add a blindfold to the mix. By not seeing where and when you’ll touch them the experience gets even more exciting and intense!
4. The essentials of wax play
You can also use wax and massage oils for temperature play but you need to be careful. Regular candles burn at a pretty high temperature, so ONLY use soy or paraffin candles for wax play! These burn at a much lower temperature, typically between 120 and 145 degree Fahrenheit, (between 48 and 62 degree Celsius) and these are the only ones that are safe to use.
Another important factor that can change how hot a candle burns is additives. Certain additives can increase the melting point and can cause the candle to burn at a much higher temperature, therefore your best bet is to purchase candles that are made specifically for wax play.
Pro tip: Just search for BDSM candles and you should find plenty of options! Never use wax on and around the face! Since you’ll be dripping the wax you can’t control where it’ll land exactly. Wax is really hard to get out of hair and hot wax getting in your eyes is a sure way to end up in the ER.
You can also change the heat by changing how high you hold the candle above your partner’s body. The higher it drips from, the more time it falls for and the more time it has to cool down a bit. If you’re ready to turn the heat up a bit more, just get the candle closer to their body.
Adjust the height slowly so the increase in temperature isn’t too much too fast! Never pour hot wax into the belly button or in any orifice!
Peeling the wax off the body is great fun too! You can use your fingernails, a dull butter knife, or any object that’s not sharp. You can use ice to harden the wax a bit more and make it easier to remove (soy wax can be pretty soft so using ice can help a bit).
You can go slow and gentle, or be a bit more rough depending on what turns you on more and also depending on the dynamic between you and your partner. Use a wet washcloth or paper towel to remove the small parts at the end.
After you finish, it’s a good idea to gently massage the areas that came in contact with the hot wax with some gentle moisturizing cream. This will help the skin get back to normal faster and is a great way to have some aftercare.
Temperature play can be an extremely fun and really intense way of adding more senses to your erotic play and it’s also a fun small step to experience power play. You can also try it with different sex positions. Make sure to always communicate a lot throughout the entire experience and after you finish too. Pay a lot of attention to what you feel and your partner too to make sure it’s a good experience for both of you.
Written by
Alec Hardy
Alec Hardy is a tech enthusiast writing posts and creating videos about sex toys and the future of sex tech. He's also an adult content creator focusing on NSFW sex toy reviews. He finished his masters in Network Protocol Security and loves to dive deep into what makes certain toys tick and come up with ideas on how to use them in fun ways.
