I Like It With The Lights On

A mini-dive into lighting preferences during sex

Photo by Photographee.eu on Adobe Stock

There’s an area of disagreement in our marriage. Hubby prefers to have sex in a dimly lit or nearly dark room. I prefer to have all the lights on. Not like full brightness because the light is right above the bed, and that just hurts, but about the midpoint of a dimmer switch.

Typically, we compromise and use our LED candles and a bedside lamp to get the room a bit brighter than Hubby wants it, but a bit dimmer than I want it. Occasionally, though, he takes one for the team and lets me have it with the lights on.

We often hear that men are more visual than women when it comes to sexual arousal, but I think that’s baloney. Nothing gets me more excited than seeing my man above me, behind me, or below me while we’re getting busy.

My favorite part of a man is his shoulders. I like the broad, muscular, and flexing with the exertion of an athletic romp. Hubby has shoulders that are quite wide for his frame, and when the lights frame them, so I get to enjoy them in all their glory. I get to trace my fingers along the dips and curves of his muscles and watch his face as my fingernails dig in when he hits a particularly good spot.

Hubby says he has a preference for dim or no light because he wants to focus on the sensation of my skin, and the warmth of my fun bits. Visual stimuli can distract him from pleasure.

As with anything sexual, when I find that people have different preferences, I like to do a bit of diving into the psychology of it. According to a survey of more than 2000 people, about half of people prefer lights on, and the other half prefer darkness when doing the deed. To get a real, scientific view of why people have lighting preferences during coitus I turned to Reddit, Quora, and Twitter.

Heightened experience

As it turns out, many people, like Hubby, enjoy the lights off because they feel it heightens their physical experience. I can certainly understand that logic because a blindfold during sex heightens the other senses. I liken this to the experience of being blindfolded during sex. One Quora contributor says that sex with the lights off helps to lower his inhibitions while also making sex feel more animalistic. Who doesn’t love intense, animalistic sex?

Self-confidence

The majority of people who say they prefer the lights off during sex cited reasons related to self-confidence. Many women and men stated that having the lights on made them feel too exposed. They worried that their partner would get too good a look at their wobbly bits.

Some Redditers stated that they kept the lights off because they didn’t want their partner to see the faces they make during sex. Again, this seems to be a self-confidence issue and is totally understandable. Especially with a new partner, letting them see your O face is a level of intimacy that can make people uncomfortable.

The most concerning trend on Reddit is that men and women who like the lights on feel as if their partner’s insistence on darkness is a sign that they aren’t attracted to them. I’ve had sex with many men and several women (no, I don’t count, so don’t ask my number), and none of them has been unattracted to me. People generally don’t fuck people they don’t find attractive. The fact that someone would think their partner turning off the lights is a sign of repulsion hurts my heart.

I think this is the reason I enjoy the lights on. I spent so much of my life thinking I wasn’t attractive that once I worked through my body image issues (for the most part), I no longer wanted to hide during sex.

Keeping the fires burning

For men, there is evidence that light boosts testosterone, which may be part of the reason a man prefers sex w. Men who prefer the lights on during sex are attracted to the visual stimuli of their partner’s nudity and arousal.

The need for visual stimuli during sex is historically a male sexual characteristic. However, research on brain response to sexual stimuli indicates that biological men and women respond in very similar ways. Perhaps, then, the preference for lights on isn’t a male-female issue, but one of personal preference.

Swinging for both sides

A large pool of people on Reddit seem to enjoy both lights on and lights off. If you’re a typical light-on person and try sex in a dark room, it can add a bit of spice to your regular routine and vice versa. I like the focus on variety and building in some easy ways to break the norm. Even changing this small thing about your sex routine with your spouse can keep monogamy from becoming monotonous.

One Quora contributor, Glen Helgeland, put it best, “Sex is one of those activities that can be enjoyed in full daylight or total darkness, in the same way that chainsaw juggling can’t.”

Most preferred lighting

The largest pool of Redditers seems to enjoy some ambient lighting, but not full daylight. Even these preferences for mood lighting had a range from moonlight through the windows to a bedside lamp or just candles.

Like our favorite kinks, it seems that there isn’t a one size fits all answer to the best lighting for sexy time. In fact, for many of us, the answer to whether you want sex with the lights on or off is a simple, “yes, please.”

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