YouTube ambience rooms

YouTube? You can’t be serious

No longer the preserve of influencers putting on make-up and dads earnestly reviewing cars. This corner of the internet offers a cosy respite from endless doomscrolling.

Is this ASMR?

Not quite. ASMR videos use sounds such as hair brushing and finger tapping to relax you. Ambience rooms are about transporting you to another world. People use them to focus on work or to chill out. You pick a place or a mood and let the soundscapes wash over you. The pictures are animated so they move, but gently, with flames crackling over a log or steam rising from a mug of cocoa. Think of it as mood music for the mind.

Which ambience room should I try first?

If it’s café culture that you’re missing, then try watching the Thames from the window of a busy tea room. Curl up in front of the fire in the library of a castle during a storm, or spend hours flipping through books in a writer’s room from the Thirties.

These are oddly specific

You have no idea. There’s an entire sub-genre of Harry Potter-themed rooms and another enclave where you can listen to any genre of music you fancy, only it sounds like its coming from another room and it’s raining. Different strokes for different stressed-out folks.

Could I design one?

Don’t think you can get into ambience room design to make a quick buck. These are labours of love that require a complex array of skills. Creators collect sounds in the wild, from birds tweeting to teaspoons clinking, then mix them into hours-long tracks. The rooms take days to design, render and animate, but sure, what’s another lockdown hobby to learn.