Sensory guide

What makes a place sensory-friendly?

A sensory-friendly place is one where noise, crowding, lighting, and smell stay within a range you can tolerate comfortably. There is no universal version of it. A room that feels calm to one person is unbearable to another, which is why a single rating cannot answer the question.

This guide explains what Jome measures, how to read it, and how to use it to plan.

What Jome measures

Jome scores an area across four dimensions. Each is a comfort score from 0 to 100, where higher means more comfortable. Together they roll up into one of three labels on the map.

The four scores combine into a single label for each area on the map:

Crucially, the label you see is adjusted to your own sensitivities. The same area can read as Moderate for one person and High Stimulation for another. You are not being shown an average.

What shapes how a place feels

A score is a summary. It helps to understand what sits underneath it, because the same number can come from very different things, and one of them may be your specific trigger.

Noise is not only volume

Two spaces at the same loudness can feel completely different. Sudden, unpredictable sounds are harder to tolerate than a constant hum. Layered sound, music over conversation over machinery, is harder than any one source alone. Hard surfaces and high ceilings add echo that makes the same sound harder to filter out.

Light is more than brightness

Some lighting flickers at a rate most people do not consciously notice but which causes headaches and disorientation for others. Reflective floors and large windows scatter glare. Cold blue-white light is more taxing than warm light for many people, even at the same brightness.

Crowding is about more than headcount

Unpredictable movement through your field of view is harder than the same number of people sitting still. Whether you can keep distance, and whether you can see and reach a way out, changes how a crowded space feels independent of how full it is.

Smell is easy to overlook

Strong or lingering smells, from traffic, cooking, or cleaning products, can make an otherwise calm space hard to stay in. It is rarely mapped anywhere, which is exactly why it is one of the four things Jome tracks.

Why one rating cannot work

Most review platforms produce a single score averaged across everyone who visited. That average is close to useless if your needs sit at the edge of the distribution.

Consider a busy, brightly lit cafe with good acoustics. For someone whose main difficulty is noise, it may be fine. For someone sensitive to light, it is unusable. One number cannot serve both, and averaging them produces a rating that serves neither.

Jome works from your own sensitivities instead. You set them once, and every place is measured against yours, not against an average.

How your sensory profile works

Setting up a profile takes a minute. You tell Jome how sensitive you are to noise, light, and smell on a slider from not sensitive to very sensitive, and how busy a place you can comfortably handle, from very quiet to very busy. You can also note preferences like venue size and how much space you like around your seat.

From then on, the map re-weights every area against those sensitivities. The more strongly a dimension affects you, the more it pulls a place toward Moderate or High Stimulation for you specifically.

You are always in control of this. Your profile is yours, and it is used to tailor what you see. See our privacy policy for how it is handled.

Ratings from people who have been there

Alongside the map, people who have visited a place can rate it. A review scores the venue from 1 to 5 across noise, crowds, lighting, temperature, and overall comfort, with an optional written note about the experience.

These community ratings sit next to the map score rather than replacing it. The map gives you a picture of the area; a review tells you how a specific place actually felt to a real person. Where reviews exist, they can be ordered by how close that person's profile is to yours, so the most relevant experiences surface first.

Planning an outing

• Check before you commit, not on arrival. The point is to decide while it is still cheap.
• Time matters as much as place. An area can be entirely different at 10am and 4pm. If a place is close to your limit, the hour you choose can decide it.
• Have an exit. Knowing where you will go if it becomes too much makes it easier to try in the first place.
• Leave a review afterwards. Places that worked are worth remembering, and your rating helps the next person with a similar profile.

Sensory access is not the same as physical access

Physical accessibility is well mapped. Ramps, lifts, doorway widths, and accessible toilets appear in most mapping tools and are covered by building regulations.

Sensory accessibility is almost entirely unmapped, despite affecting a large number of people. A step is visible, and someone turned away by one is visibly excluded. Sensory barriers are quieter: people simply decide not to come. Nobody is turned away, so nothing gets recorded, and the exclusion never appears in any statistic.

Jome does not replace physical accessibility information. For step-free access or accessible toilets, check a physical accessibility source as well.

That absence of evidence is exactly why the problem stays unaddressed.

Common questions