Porous material

A porous material has microscopic holes in its surface that trap bacteria, bodily fluids and lubricant — and cannot be fully cleaned. Jelly, PVC, TPE, TPR, rubber and most elastomers fall into this category. They feel soft and they are cheap to make, which is why they appear in so many toys, but they cannot be sterilised. That matters more for anal play than anywhere else, because the risk of cross-contamination is higher and the consequences are worse.

You cannot boil a porous toy, you cannot bleach it, and soap will not reach what is trapped inside the material. If you use it anally and then vaginally, or share it between partners, you are moving bacteria from one place to another. The standard advice is to keep porous toys to one person and one orifice, or to cover them with a fresh condom every time — which works, but also means you are managing risk every session instead of eliminating it once.

Non-porous materials — silicone, glass, stainless steel — do not have that problem. Clean them properly and they last for years, with no condom required and no guesswork about whether they are safe to use again. That is why we filter for them, why 48 of the products we score are non-porous, and why the material appears at the top of every review. It is not about fear; it is about knowing what you are living with.

Five related guides cover what this means in practice, from which materials are genuinely body-safe to how sterilisation works for each one.

What sex toy materials are actually body-safe — the short list of materials that do not trap bacteria, and what the marketing terms actually mean.

Porous vs non-porous sex toy materials, explained — why the distinction matters more than any other spec, and how to tell which is which.

How to sterilise every anal toy material — what works, what does not, and what "sterilise" actually means.

Can a porous toy ever be made safe to share — the condom method, when it works, and when it does not.

Cleaning protocols by toy material — step-by-step care for silicone, glass, steel, and everything else.

The Snug Report is published by the team behind Coy, a New Zealand retailer that stocks many of the products reviewed here. We say so on every page. Our scores come from aggregated public reviews, not from us — the method is on the methodology page and the evidence count is on every review.