Short summary: Many schools now have a sensory room, and many of those rooms are rarely used. The room is not the problem. Relying on the room is.
By Dr Sherley Louis
Walk into many schools today and someone will proudly show you the sensory room. Soft lights, a bubble tube, beanbags, a weighted blanket folded on a shelf.
It is a good thing that these rooms exist. But ask how often they are used, and the answer is often not much.
Look at the floor plan and you see why. The sensory room is usually at the end of a corridor, far from the classroom.
To use it, a child has to leave the lesson, walk past other rooms, often with an adult, and then find their way back.
By the time they arrive, the hard moment has already happened. By the time they return, they have missed the learning.
The room is not the problem
A dedicated sensory space has a place. But when it is the only place where calm is allowed, we send a quiet message.
if you need regulation, you must leave. Inclusion that depends on removal is not inclusion.
Calm has to be designed into the everyday room, the classroom, the waiting area, the office, the corridor.
That is where people spend their day, and that is where they need to be able to stay.
Three levels, one environment
In my work I use a simple structure I call the Sensory Inclusion Climate. It looks at one environment working at three levels:
- The everyday space. Light, sound, layout and routines planned so that most people never need to leave.
- Micro-supports within reach. Ear defenders on the desk, a fidget box, a quiet corner inside the room, used early instead of too late.
- Deeper regulation. A dedicated space for the moments that need it, designed to help a person return to the room, not to remove them from it.
Who decides what the room becomes?
In many schools the classroom is handed to the teacher at the start of the year, already built.
Lighting, acoustics, door placement and space to move were decided long before the people responsible for inclusion arrived. That is a planning problem, not a teaching problem.
Every building is renovated one day. When that happens, inclusion staff need to be at the table before the drawings are signed, alongside the architect, procurement and leadership.
Once the plan is final, inclusion becomes a repair, and repairs cost more.
Where to begin
The good news, most of what matters costs nothing. Switch off half the lights.
Warn before the bell. Let a child choose where to sit. Start there, watch what changes, and build from it.
I will be speaking about this at the opening of the Industry Leadership Hub at AccessAbilities Expo 2026 on Monday 19 October at 10:30 am, Dubai World Trade Centre.
Download my free guide, Sensory Strategies: 8 senses, practical solutions, at sherleylouis.com/#sensory