Someone asks "Dom or sub?" within the first three lines, every time, in every room built for one or the other. LewdChat's switch chat exists because that question has no clean answer for a lot of people, and pretending it does gets exhausting fast. Pick a nickname and skip the interrogation. No signup, no account, just a room that already knows what you are.
What being a switch isn't
It isn't a beginner phase you grow out of once you finally figure out which side fits. Some switches did start there, plenty didn't, and either way the label sticks because it's accurate, not because a decision hasn't happened yet. It also isn't the same as being undecided. Undecided means you haven't tried either direction and don't know. A switch has tried both, more than once, and wants both, on different nights or with different people or sometimes inside the same scene. The BDSM chat room fills up with people who've settled into one role and stayed there, and that's fine for them. It just isn't what a switch is describing when they say the word.
Getting sorted before you've said anything
Walk into most rooms and the sorting starts on sight, usually from your nickname alone. A "sub" tag reads as an offer to be topped. A "Dom" tag reads as an offer to run someone. Neither reading is wrong exactly, it's just built for one direction, and a switch trips it constantly because the room wants a category before it wants a conversation. The workaround is saying it plainly and early: "I switch, into both" closes the question before anyone spends five minutes guessing. It also filters out people who only wanted the box you didn't check, which saves everyone the awkward walk-back later.
Deciding direction before the scene starts
Being a switch answers what you're capable of. It doesn't answer what tonight is. That's a separate conversation, and skipping it is where a lot of switch scenes go sideways before they've even begun. Ask directly: is one of you leaning a particular way, does the other have a preference, is either of you flexible enough to take whichever role the other one doesn't want. Negotiating a scene covers the general shape of this conversation. For a switch it carries extra weight, because "I'll do either" can sound like generosity and actually mean neither of you picked, and then you're both waiting for the other to lead.
Handing off mid-scene
The harder version happens inside a scene that's already running, when the direction wants to flip partway through. That handover isn't automatic just because you're both switches. It needs its own agreement, made before the scene starts, not improvised in the moment when one of you suddenly wants to be on the other side of it. Decide the signal for a handover request, decide whether either person can say no without it reading as a rejection, and decide what happens to the pace and mood once the roles actually swap. A handover done well feels like the scene got bigger. One done without any of that groundwork usually just feels confusing, and confusing kills momentum fast.
Finding a switch chat room that runs both ways
Not everyone in a general kink room is willing or able to switch with you, and hunting for the ones who are burns time you'd rather spend playing. A dedicated switch room solves that by starting from the answer instead of the question. If you'd rather build toward a role first, how to be a dom and how to be a sub both cover what each side asks of you, and reading both isn't wasted effort for a switch, it's the job description. The BDSM glossary has the shorthand if any of the room's vocabulary throws you. Finding a switch covers the search itself in more depth, worth a read if the room feels thin some nights.
Say both, mean both, and let the direction sort itself out in the room.