“How to Build a Sex Room” challenges the dogma. Forget the open house, this is about what happens behind closed doors. Instead of ending up with a farmhouse sink and Edison bulbs, you get couples sprawled on a tufted sofa, their legs flung over one another, fawning about their newly improved love life. You get rooms with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and chains hung from the ceilings. Unlike the anonymous, interchangeable couples you typically see on home improvement shows, these ones bare all, revealing details about their lives that most people would not even share with their closest friends, let alone the viewing public.

Sex rooms are not particularly cheap. Ms. Rose estimated the renovations on the show ranged from around $30,000 to $70,000, although the homeowners did not foot the bill. (The production company, High Noon Entertainment, paid for the work.) Some of the renovations Ms. Rose has done privately cost upward of $200,000. But she sees it as a worthy investment.

The bedroom “absolutely should be the first place” homeowners renovate, Ms. Rose told me. “Because that’s the place where we, as a couple, as partners, we sleep together, that’s where we have sex. That’s where we start our families. So why not make it more romantic?”

Shenika and Matthew Carter saw their renovation project as one that could potentially save their marriage — a tall order for a home-improvement show. “The love was there, that was no doubt,” said Ms. Carter, 41, the chief executive of the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. “We couldn’t figure out why there was a lack of intimacy.”

The couple, who bought the five-bedroom home in 2019, had made significant improvements — renovating the basement, customizing the deck and updating the backyard. “We were creating all this stuff for the kids,” Ms. Carter said. “We did everything imaginable to give it that home feel, but there was nothing for me and Matthew.”

So their bedroom was an afterthought, with two televisions, a hulking four-poster bed and laundry strewn across the floor. Their 5-year-old daughter often slept in the room, while Ms. Carter frequently fell asleep in the living room — hardly a recipe for romance.

Ms. Rose gutted the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom, changing the layout so Mr. Carter, 38, who owns a truck-driving academy with his wife, can now watch her shower from the bed. They also added a stripper pole to the middle of the bedroom. “I’m from Atlanta, home of the strip clubs,” Ms. Carter said. When she dances on the pole, “I’m in Atlanta in Denver.”

Their favorite addition, however, is the thumbprint-activated lock they added to the bedroom door. The family bed is a thing of the past. “That was a reckoning, putting that knob on that door,” Ms. Carter said.

Now the bedroom is the couple’s favorite destination. Each night after family dinner, homework, chores and bedtime routines, they retreat to their retreat, enjoying the improvements they made to satisfy no one but each other.