Mike Ayres Design – Sensory Integration and Multi-Sensory Rooms

Mike Ayres Design designs, makes and installs sensory rooms and sensory equipment, from a workshop in Garboldisham near Diss in Norfolk. Its buyers are mostly schools — mainstream and specialist — early years settings, hospitals, therapy centres and care services, though it also supplies equipment for home use. For anyone commissioning a space for autistic or otherwise neurodivergent children and adults, the relevant point is that rooms are built around the people who will use them rather than sold as a standard package.

Mike Ayres has designed equipment and environments for people with additional needs since the 1980s and has trained the designers who now work alongside him. The company's stated aim is a room where people feel safe and can seek out or turn down sensory input and control their surroundings themselves — rather than a fixed light show run by staff. Projects begin with a free design visit and site assessment, followed by 3D visualisations, project management and installation by the company's own team. It has worked with Cardiff University on guidance for designing sensory rooms for autistic children. The range covers bubble tubes, fibre optics, sound and light, projection and interactive projection, switch control and the Switch4 iPad app, a mobile sensory trolley, tactile panels and murals, soft play, padding, balance and movement equipment, waterbeds, ball pools, aromas, UV and wind effects.

Aftercare is set out in published plans for mainland UK. Pay-as-you-go call-outs are available; the Saturn plan includes an annual service and discounted parts; the Jupiter plan covers up to three rooms with extra call-outs and online staff refresher training. The company will service rooms installed by other suppliers, and eligible customers can apply for VAT relief on equipment.