I Left A Silicone Sex Toy In Silicone Lube For 3 Months – And Here’s What Happened

I Left A Silicone Sex Toy In Silicone Lube For 3 Months – And Here’s What Happened

Are you wondering if silicone lubes can damage your silicone toys? If so, that doesn’t surprise me. This rumour/myth remains prevalent in online sex toy shop product descriptions and various sexual health guides. What happens when silicone lube is used with silicone sex toys? Does silicone lube erode the silicone material? I wanted to prove once and for all what exactly does happen when silicone lubricant is used with a silicone sex toy – and not only used with, but left to soak for quite some time. So here it is! My experiment, where I left a silicone sex toy in silicone lube for 3 months…
Read on to find out exactly what happened.

Related: Guide to Sex Toy Materials | Silicone Lubricants Guide | Silicone Sex Toy Reviews

Wait, what myth?

There’s a myth which is prevalent in the adult product industry, that silicone lubricant should not be used with silicone sex toys. This is still mentioned in various sex toy descriptions on some adult retail web stores, and on some silicone toy packaging/in the accompanying instructions.

When I began my blogging journey, 14 years ago at the time of writing, I used to parrot this ‘advice’ in my own sexual advice guides and sex toy reviews for quite some time. After all, the sex toy shops said it on their product descriptions, so who was I to argue?

Where did this myth originate?

The ‘you can’t use silicone lube with silicone sex toys’ myth originated many years ago. I don’t know exactly when, and I’m not sure anyone could accurately pinpoint the source. It has to be at least 14 years ago, because as I mentioned above that’s when I started sex blogging and the rumour/myth was going strong at that point.

Why did people start preaching/believing it? Well, sex toys described as silicone weren’t always necessarily made with silicone. Some, perhaps a lot, were made with cheaper materials which were flexible and therefore resembled silicone. The important thing is that they weren’t silicone, therefore they weren’t compatible with various lubricants like 100% guaranteed silicone sex toys are.

Because ‘silicone sex toys’ were being sold in bricks and mortar sex shops and then, in time, online adult retail stores, which weren’t necessarily made with actual silicone, warnings abounded on the toy packaging and in the online product descriptions not to use silicone lubricant with silicone toys.

The sex toy industry was and shockingly remains largely unregulated, so it’s unsurprising that rules were made up as the industry and toy technology moved along. It reminds me of the famous quote:

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

As the adult industry progressed and time ticks along as it has a habit of doing, silicone as a material became cheaper for manufacturers to use in their products and more widely available. As consumers upped their standards for body safety, the demand for genuinely 100% silicone sex toys increased, and businesses needed to supply them in order to remain successful. In time, the majority of sex toys labelled as silicone came to actually be made from 100% silicone material (hurrah!).

But the warning not to use silicone lube with silicone sex toys had been drilled into brands and consumers for so long, that it had evolved into ‘fact’. It prevailed in the adult industry and in people’s minds and remains one of the most quoted pieces of sex product advice out there. No matter what evidence now points to the contrary.

Back to my experiment…

The Products

I planned to leave a silicone sex toy in silicone lubricant for some time, then see if there had been any degradation or change to the material. For this experiment I needed brand new products, so everyone can be sure that the silicone sex toy had no prior damage, and that the silicone lube used is fresh rather than old or even past its expiry date. Yes, sex lube has an expiry date.

Heading to one of my favourite toy stores, bondara.co.uk, I checked out the silicone lube aisle then headed to the silicone toys area. After some browsing I settled on the Bondara silicone lube, and a Bondara silicone butt plug in black with an attractive blue marble effect to the material.

My Bondara shopping arrived in good time as usual, in discreet outer wrap for the post and well packed within the plain brown box.

The Lube

Bondara Silicone Luxury Lubricant: BUY HERE (£9.99)

The Toy

Bondara Mon Amour Black Marble Silicone Butt Plug: BUY HERE (£7.99)

The Experiment

Date of the experiment: 14th March 2023 – 14th June 2023

After checking over the silicone lube and silicone butt plug and ensuring they were both suitable for this experiment, I was ready to begin. I selected a small container, into which firstly I could pour an adequate amount of silicone lube, then stand the butt plug tip-down into it, so the tip would be coated constantly in the silicone lube for the duration.

I set the container aside somewhere safe – inside my bathroom cabinet, where it would be out of direct sunlight, unlikely to be disturbed by anyone else and could just get on and do its thing. Or do nothing at all. Qué será, será.

And that’s it. It wasn’t a very complex experiment, but it didn’t have to be. Silicone toy in silicone lube… what would happen?

The Results

I checked on the silicone butt plug in the silicone lube, in the container in my bathroom cabinet, at infrequent intervals during the elapsed experiment time. Nothing seemed to be happening to the surface of the butt plug, and there was no discolouration or change that I could detect in the silicone lube, either.

Of course, I had yet to complete the required time period, wash off the lubricant from the surface of the toy, and properly inspect it.

After three months of the tip of the silicone butt plug soaking in silicone lubricant, I was ready to discover the results of my ‘silicone toy left in silicone lube experiment’.
So, what had happened to my silicone toy after all that time soaking in silicone sex lube?

The worst thing about leaving a silicone sex toy in silicone lube for 3 months is getting the silicone lube washed off the toy afterwards. It took a lot of hot, soapy water and a nail brush! Once thoroughly cleaned, then dried, I could see that the silicone lubricant, as I’d predicted, had no visible effect on the silicone material of the butt plug at all. I can’t speak for invisible effects, obviously, but as far as I could tell there had been no damage or detrimental effects to the surface of the sex toy as a consequence of being left sat in silicone lube for three months. There were no cracks, no peeling of the material, no change in surface texture.

The only conclusion to draw from this is that absolutely nothing happens if you leave a 100% silicone sex toy in silicone lube for 3 months. Therefore, you are able to use silicone lube with genuine silicone sex toys during masturbation, foreplay and sex without any worries about negative effects to the material of your toy. Just make sure the sex toy you want to use is actually silicone, not some other material like jelly or PVC.

You can find out more about adult product materials and the recommended, body-safe ones, in my guide to sex toy materials.

Post-Lube Video Results

Below you can view a short video of the retrieval of the silicone sex toy from the silicone lube after the 3 months experiment duration. In this video I take the silicone butt plug out of the lubricant for the first time in 3 months, I wash and dry the silicone butt plug, and show the surface of the sex toy and how it has been undamaged and unaffected by the silicone lubricant.

In Conclusion

If you are certain that your sex toy of choice is made from silicone, then you can use silicone lubricant with it without any fear of damage or harmful consequences to the toy or your body. As I’ve demonstrated above, in this experiment where I left a 100% silicone sex toy dipped in silicone lube for 3 months, there are no negative effects from the two being in contact. After all, people stack silicone bakeware together in the kitchen cupboard all the time, so why would silicone sex toys and silicone lubricant be incompatible?

Just make sure you research the material of your toy, and the exact formulation of your lubricant, to ensure they are actually silicone. Clean yourself and your sex toy thoroughly after your pleasure session, with warm soapy water to remove all the traces of silicone (for cleanliness/neatness rather than material safety), then dry the toy thoroughly before putting away for next time. You can spritz it a couple of times with anti-bacterial sex toy cleaner if you like, for complete hygiene reassurance.

I hope this article and experiment goes some way to reassure that you CAN use silicone lube with silicone sex toys, as long as both items are genuinely silicone, regardless of what you may read on sex toy shopping websites, in sexual advice guides or the product packaging.

While you’re here thinking about sex toys, why not check out the bargains over at Bondara? You can enjoy 15% off all full-price orders too, with my exclusive discount code CARA15:

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