A spanking may be carried out with the use of a bare hand, or with any of a variety of implements, including a paddle, strap,hairbrush or belt. Other popular tools are canes, riding crops, whips, switches,birches, sneakers, rolled-up newspapers,rulers or martinet.

Costume

Spanking skirt

A spank skirt (also called a spanking skirt) has an additional opening in back designed to expose the buttocks. While the name spank skirt suggests that the wearer could be spanked "bare bottom" without removing or repositioning the skirt, this item may be worn for reasons other than spanking (for instance, exposure).

Considered fetish wear, spank skirts are typically tight-fitting and made of fetishistic materials (such as leather, PVC or latex).

Regardless of the gender of the wearer, spank skirts are usually considered female attire. The male gender role equivalent might be motorcycle chaps.

Other garments associated with spanking as well as humiliation are ruffled or rhumba panties, women's panties with rows of ruffles on the rear panel or outside.

Apparatus

Spanking bench

A spanking bench or spanking horse is a piece of furniture used to position a spankee on, with or without restraints. They come in many sizes and styles, the most popular of which is similar to a sawhorsewith a padded top and rings for restraints.

The 19th century British dominatrix MrsTheresa Berkley became famous for her invention of the Berkley Horse, a similar form of BDSM apparatus.

Those who are interested in the practice giving or receiving erotic spankings are sometimes referred tospankophiles.
Examples include the poet Algernon Swinburne (as implied repeatedly in his poetry) and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as detailed in his autobiographyConfessions:

... Miss Lambercier... exerted a mother's authority, even to inflicting on us... the punishment of infants... Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life... To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments, and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination the more I acquired the appearance of a whining lover."