Buying guide – Floggers

Floggers! The quintessential impact implement, and icon of BDSM. Easy to learn, yet difficult to master – these are typically one of the first items added to anyone’s BDSM toy-box.

Floggers are incredibly versatile. Thuddy, sting-y, caressing, ouchy, jarring, meditative or subspace-inducing. The sensations that can be produced can vary widely and wildly, depending on a range of factors: the weight and material of the flogger, how forcefully it is used, the style in which is used, where on the body it lands. Great for beginners, but also potentially challenging enough to keep both givers and receivers interested for many years.

There are so many floggers and flogger-makers now, from big producers to boutique crafts-people. It took us quite some time to investigate and compile our recommendations. What we found is a huge range of both quality and price – sometimes correlated but not always. Enjoy, and happy flogging!

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Tips for floggers:

• Some quick flogger anatomy: the swishy bits at the end are known as the falls or tails. The bit you hold is the handle. Some (but not all) have a loop attached to the handle which you can put your wrist through to make sure it doesn’t go flying – or to use to hang it from when storing.
• The lengths stated in our reviews are the total length of the handle and falls, but exclude the extra loop attached to the handle (if any).
• A good flogger should be balanced, and the falls should generally swing together. It’s not ideal a few falls go off rogue in different directions than the rest once you start swinging, because it means you might hit bits you don’t intend to.
• There is more than one ways to swing a flogger. Many people favor a classic “figure 8” in which you only strike during the downward strokes. But you can of course reverse this and strike with the upward stroke. You can also swish it side to side, or even flick it at the target.
• Try to avoid “wrapping” which is when you the tips of the flogger go beyond the intended point of contact, and wrap around to placed that don’t feel great – like bony bits or over internal organs.
• Florentine – once you get comfortable with a flogger, you will no doubt want to learn florentine, which is a pattern of using two floggers simultaneously in which they interweave each other. For this to work well, you generally need to have two floggers which are identical in size and weight.

All buying guide products are reviewed based on the unbiased opinions of our contributors. After reviews are written, vendors may sponsor reviews to promote or extend their placement on the buying guide. For more information or to suggest a product to be included, please contact us.