Seeing Illusions at the Paradox Museum

I’ve been seeing the Paradox Museum advertised for quite some time, but wasn’t sure if it was actually worth all of the hype. Looking to do something completely new at the weekend, we finally decided to go. The Paradox Museum has several locations, but we went off to the London branch, which is relatively easy to get too. The Paradox Museum is full of different optical illusions, which have various points on where you could stand to perfectly see the illusion. When we arrived, we dropped our coats into the free coat room, then went on our adventure.

The opening area is a bunch of boxes that go on infinitely, which looks interesting, but all the signs saying not to touch them did take away from this first entrance way. Luckily, it was just an entrance to a bunch of activities! We started off by using the shadow room to “print” our shadows onto the walls, something we previously did at the Wonderlab, though to a much smaller scale. We then watched some of the figures that were animating through pushing a button and spinning them around, before taking pictures with the infinite chess board setup. At this point, all three children were already amazed and were well into it, even the teenager.

The Paradox Museum feels like a hundred little wonders, all placed together. There are QR codes at each showcase, which give you more information on the illusion and how they work. We then continued through a very interesting graffiti area, which had lots of smaller pieces of art, including a frog sculpture that you can only see in the reflection on a poll, two rings that you can spin on top of each other, and a metal pole that doesn’t look like it will fit in the gap but it does. It was fantastic that so many of the areas inside the Paradox Museum were interactive in this way. We also put on giant cloaks and blended into the background of the next area, before entering a topsy-turvy room.

There were just a lot of small interactive wonders. A room where the lights gave us interesting shadows, a light you could move to make butterfly wings flap, there was a temperature thing that let you feel a cold side, a warm side, then a mix of the cold and warm side. The various information explained how these worked and why they worked, which was interesting to read. We then got to go to the start of areas that are perfect for taking photos of your own illusions.

In the Paradox Museum, there are plenty of staff to take pictures for you and direct you. One helped us understand the illusion where one person is legs and the other is a body, so on a couch they look dissembled. This area also had photo frames in the background, which allows more than two people to be in the picture. We went as a family, so having these extra photo frames were a nice touch, as more of us could participate in the picture. It wasn’t too packed at all, especially considering the fact that it was Sunday. There were rooms where the art changed depending on the color that flashed and sculptures that looked different from different perspectives. We got to play on a giant wall of different squares that could be moved around, but the pattern never broke. These interesting illusions really captivated Robin and Amelia, who found them to be some of the best! Kai preferred more of the perspective based illusions that had you walking through something or posing in a specific way. There were a lot of variety!

There was a sort of themed section around trains; an upside down train station, a portal through a subway platform, and a bridge that you walk across that makes it feel like the room is spinning. This area was at the end, and it felt really well themed all together! We ended up going back and walking the bridge a second time, as it was so amusing. Beyond this area, there were kaleidoscopes. Ones that you could walk in, ones that you can create with your own face. With so many wonders, we had a fantastic time and we all want to go back to another soon!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!