Since 2012, Sex Siopa has been Ireland’s favourite and most inclusive sex shop. Owner Shawna Scott talked with us and gave a beginners guide to sex toys! 

To start your journey in finding what’s right for you, Shawna suggests to “start by just masturbating on your own and figuring out what feels good to you and what you’d like to add on to that.” Figuring out what kind of sensations you like can help in finding the right toy to begin with. 

For many people with vulvas the most popular beginners sex toy is a vibrator. With vibrators, there are a few different kinds; “you have your battery operated, you have a rechargeable vibrator, and you have a mains powered vibrator. The mains powered ones are just going to blow your head off, if you’re brand new to toys you probably don’t want to start with something like that.” 

For beginners Shawna suggests starting with something smaller, like the Rocks Off Touch of Velvet Bullet Vibrator or the Tenga Iroha Mini Egg “which is literally the size of a pot of lip balm.” 

“Even if you’ve been using toys for years it’s nice to have something small like that you can just throw in your handbag or bedside locker!” 

For anyone who is interested in anal play, the big thing when looking for an anal toy for beginners is safety first above everything else. “The Fun Factory Bootie Butt Plug is world renowned as being the best quintessential beginners butt plug.” 

This butt plug has a nice base and as Shawna says “the thing you need to be most aware of when you’re buying an anal toy, is making sure that the base is bigger than the actual toy itself. That it’s going to sit in your butt crack and not get sucked up inside you.

“It has an extra wide base but it’s also nice and thin, so it’s just going to sit really comfortably in your butt crack.”

The last of the beginners sex toys that we talked about were masturbation sleeves for penises. The Tenga Egg travel masturbation sleeve is perfect for a beginner who wants to try out something new “before purchasing one of our larger Tenga masturbators.” 

Something that all beginners should be thinking about is lubricant. “When you’re using toys I would always recommend starting off with a water based [lubricant] first and seeing how you get on with that. So there’s three main types of lubricants and that’s water based, silicon based, and oil based. The silicone base and oil base are much longer lasting.”

You can’t use silicone lubricant with silicone toys, and you can’t use oil based lubricant with a porous toy like the Tenga Egg, “you also wouldn’t want to use it with condoms, because it can degrade the latex so that would like render a condom unsafe.”

The type of lube you use could also depend on the type of toy you’re using or what kind of activities you’re going to be using it for. If you’re “going to require a lot of like friction, like a lot of hard fucking, a thicker lubricant would be better. If you’re doing something a bit more gentle or something vaginal, lubricant that’s a bit more watery –like the Yes– would be better.

“A good all around, something that is toy safe for all toys, and condom friendly would be like a water based lubricant. All of the lubricants that I stock are glycerin and paraben free so they’re [body safe and] much less likely to cause any sort of irritation or thrush.” 

Lastly, it’s important to know how to clean your new toy. “When cleaning sex toys, for the most part, just soap and hot water usually does the job. With a battery operated toy, make sure that you take out the battery and that you don’t get any water in the battery compartment. 

“With porous toys, like the masturbation sleeves, you do have to throw them away eventually because no amount of cleaning is going to keep every bit of bacteria out. So some of them, like the eggs, you can use up to 10 times.” 

If you have a 100 percent silicone toy that doesn’t have a battery compartment, these can be boiled on the hob in order to disinfect the toy. 

Most importantly, have fun and be safe! Check out the full collection of sex toys for beginners that Shawna has picked out her website.