Raves at home can be an amazing experience, and they’re definitely a lot of fun. But before you get started, there are a few things you need to know.
No matter what you decide to do, you will have some planning to do, and in some cases a lot of planning.
Creating your own Rave is not necessarily difficult, but it is complex, many things come into play, and you will need time to prepare them plus they need to be done at a certain time.
Whether it is for booking the DJs, sending the invitations, setting up your home inside and outside, renting the proper material, designing the environment, or buying all the necessary food and drinks, you will need time!
In this post, we’ll talk about three different ways to rave at home: alone, with friends, or with attendees.
- Raving alone at home
- Throwing a rave at home with some friends
- Creating your own Rave with attendees at home
- First, define the genre and call up and book DJs, either friends or hire professionals
- Second, choose your location carefully
- Third, set up, find, or rent a good sound system
- Fourth, decide how many people and start promoting early
- Fifth, ask a friend or hire someone to take care of the bar
- Sixth, ask friends or hire someone to help clean the house
Raving alone at home
Raving alone is actually a really great way to relax and unwind. You can turn up the music as loud as you want, dance however you want, and there’s no one around to judge you.
Plus, you don’t have to worry about anyone else’s opinion or what they think of your dancing. It can be a really great way to let loose and just have fun.
Decide on the sound system
If you are in a house or an apartment that has great soundproofing you can go with speakers, otherwise, if the walls are thin, you will be better off using a headset. It’s a great way to have a rave without disturbing the neighbors. And you can put the volume as high as you want. (Careful with your ears still)
Create the space
You will have to pick the ideal room to create your rave environment. A room where you can easily move around furniture to create more space in the middle for all the dancing, hoops, poi, etc…
You will also have to create the right ambiance, besides the music, most of it will come from the lighting.
A ton of different products are available on the market to create a great effect in your room or the place you have selected.
Find below our picks for home-alone raves.
Rope Lights that react to sound
Decide on artist and music
You have three choices when you are raving solo, you can either follow a live rave in streaming, pick a compilation on YouTube or Spotify or create your own playlist.
Following a streamed rave from home has become increasingly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to connect with the rave community and experience some of the best DJs in the world, without leaving your living room.
On both YouTube and Spotify, you can find perfect compilations that can last for ten hours and more, so you don’t have to check the music and change anything.
Your only focus will remain on dancing, gloving, poi, or anything you love to do when you rave.
Also on both Youtube and Spotify, you can make your personal playlist, you will have to prepare it prior to your own event this can take a while, especially if you have planned a whole night rave.
By the way, raving at home alone is a great experience, and we are happy to help you realize this personal event. That being said, if you are raving by yourself because raving with other people makes you anxious, we have a full article on how to handle anxiety for those types of events.
If this does not apply to you, you got here everything you need to enjoy your own rave at home. Enjoy!
Throwing a rave at home with some friends
Of course, when you’re throwing a rave with your friends, there are a few things you need to take into account.
First of all, you need to make sure everyone is on the same page in terms of what they want out of the experience. Do they want to go hard and party all night? Or are they looking for something a bit more chill?
Once you’ve figured that out, you can start planning accordingly.
Decide on the sound system
The same options you have when you are raving alone at home apply with friends.
If you are in a house or an apartment that has great soundproofing you can go with speakers, otherwise, if the walls are thin, your best bet will be synchronized headsets also called silent disco.
Silent disco is when everyone wears headphones and dances to the same music. It’s a great way to have a rave without disturbing the neighbors.
It can be expensive at first, this is why if you are not planning on throwing much more raves better to rent them.
These AXVVPII are great for silent discos
If you decide to go with speakers, as this is an event with only friends, you can ask them if they have anything you could borrow from them that is better quality than what you have at the moment.
If you could not find from your friend any gear that works for what you had planned, we have a couple of options for you.
None of them is cheap per se, but if you are planning on throwing multiple raves, you can go with those speakers:
or that one JBL Party Box 710:
If you don’t feel like spending this much, you can definitely rent. It will be much cheaper and your sound quality will as good as a professional sound system rave.
Always remember that the sound quality in a rave is the number one priority.
Create the space
The same thing that what we advised for throwing a rave alone, but know that the bigger the room the better. If you have a big home, you could even set up different stages.
Careful though, you still want to avoid sound bleeding make sure the stages are far away or have good soundproofing, otherwise, instead of having two or three good performances you will have a crappy show.
For each stage take the time to create the rave vibe and environment with lighting and even some fog.
Here are some ideas for the lightning and fog:
Rope Lights that react to sound
And some smoke machines:
Decide on having a DJ friend or putting a great playlist
Whether it is a close friend or a friend of a friend having your own DJ for the event will definitely put your rave to the next level.
If you are hosting a rave with a DJ, make sure he has his own space to put all of his gear.
The DJ “booth” or space really needs to have room to be comfortable enough, so he can move and his or her gear is protected enough from any spills or bumps from people dancing, etc…
If you are planning on putting a great playlist, same thing, you should have an easy-to-reach and protected area so you can make adjustments during the night without disturbing the people dancing, drinking, and so on.
Again, if you go on the playlist route you will find great compilations and mixes on YouTube and Spotify.
Creating your own Rave with attendees at home
This is the last level before launching your own professional rave!
When rave at home starts to become this big, and if you can afford it, you can decide to make it free for everyone, but if not, you could easily ask for some contribution upon entry.
Note that creating your own Rave is not necessarily difficult, but it is complex, many things come into play, and they all need to be done at a certain time.
Creating a rave demands a lot of planning, the more time you have to prepare it, the better chance you have for it to be a smashing success.
Whether it is for booking the DJs, sending the invitations, setting up your home inside and outside, renting the proper material, designing the environment, or buying all the necessary food and drinks, you will need time.
First, define the genre and call up and book DJs, either friends or hire professionals
Well, it is your rave, so you decide what type of music will be played during the event. If the home you have is big enough, you can even set up many rooms or areas, with different genres.
By doing so, people will have the choice during the night between the different styles and music, which is great for their rave experience.
When it comes to finding and picking the right Dj for your event, your network will be your strongest tool. Whether it is a friend or some other professional, using your network will be best.
If you had no luck with your entourage, you can do your research online. They are great websites to find DJs online.
Be sure to look at the Dj’s past events, his style, and reviews before making your final decision.
Second, choose your location carefully
You’ll need to make sure that your location is large enough to accommodate all of your guests.
The location is not as important as the sound, but it is close. You need to have a great location, so if your home or apartment is big enough, you need to delimit your house.
You will have to do this with real signage, telling people this area is off-limits. They will need to have access to bathrooms, though.
Define how many rooms or areas you want to have for the guests, and move to other rooms all the things that you do not want to see broken or damaged.
Once you know where the rave will actually take place, create a ravy environment.
Depending on how much space you have, creating the right environment for a rave can go from having cool lighting to fog machines to neon decor or even unique light sculptures.
If you don’t have those and you are planning on doing many raves you can buy them or, same advice that for the sound system, you can also rent.
If you are looking for some ideas you can use our hand-picked rave lighting, neon, and fog products here!
There you will find some ideas for neon structure, cool light effects, and smoke machines.
Third, set up, find, or rent a good sound system
The sound system is more important than the lighting, the drinks, or anything else. If you are planning on having a lot of people at your rave, you absolutely need to have a great sound system.
If you already have the necessary gear, you just need to set it up, but if you don’t, ask around, and ask some friends if they can help you out with it.
If you cannot find the proper sound system, you will have to rent one. Make sure you call the company you will rent from many weeks prior to the event, as the good gear is often booked many weeks or months before an event.
Fourth, decide how many people and start promoting early
As soon as you have confirmed the DJ(s), the location, and the sound system, you need to promote your event. You want people to be available, excited for what is to come, and feel that the number of attendees will be limited.
This is why they need to confirm as soon as they can, and this will allow you to make sure you will host at full capacity.
To make sure people get excited and that you are not planning another “random rave” it is good to think of a theme. Knowing your theme will help you with your decor and your style for the flyer.
For the flyer, either use your network or use websites like Upwork or Fiverr to find your own digital artist.
If your network is pretty active, you will have to control how many people and who is getting in.
Make sure you don’t go overboard with the number of guests. The idea is to have the main guest list, and you could allow a +1 or +2 per guest.
But you do not want to go too crazy, as if you have too many people you do not know, the rave could have a turn you did not expect.
You want your house to be the host of a great night, you don’t want it to be ravaged by strangers and be sorry when the sun comes up.
So yes, you want people but having some control over who will come is essential.
You can either have full faith in your guest and know that they will only bring great people, or have some kind of a bouncer.
A friend that would be OK to cross off people from the guest list while they enter to make sure there are no intruders.
Once you know how many people will be there, buy the necessary drinks and food to cover the duration of the event.
Fifth, ask a friend or hire someone to take care of the bar
If you invite more than friends, you will have to have someone at the bar. This will help make sure things do not get messy and ensure that people will have a great time.
This will entirely depend on the number of people coming because you don’t want too many people queuing to get a drink or food.
Whereas if you had someone in charge there, drinks will be served quicker and the process will be overall more effective.
You want people to enjoy the music and you do not want to worry about the drink and food situation.
So find someone to put in charge of the drink and food, so you know that during the event it is taken care of.
Sixth, ask friends or hire someone to help clean the house
Once everyone is almost gone, and you are there to appreciate the aftermath of the rave, you will need people to help you out getting your house back on its feet.
It is not the sexiest part of the rave we’ll admit that but having people to help you is crucial.
So again ask some close friends for help or hire somebody that could do the heavy lifting cleaning for you.
That is it, as you see, you need many elements to make sure your rave is a success.
We covered as much as possible while staying general, as you will see, depending on your style of rave other things will have to be added.
We only laid the structure on how to host a rave, but simply based on the location, the DJs, the guests, and other things, more details will have to be thought out.
One example, if the location has a pool you will need to have towels prepared, rules to get in or out of the house once people are wet, etc…
We hope that our article helped you or saved you some time in your research, and we wish you a great event
Rave safe!
