 "Padded Room" opened up to generally favorable reviews from music critics.At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 70, based on 5 reviews.Jesal 'Jay Soul' Padania of RapReviews gave the album a 7.5 out of ten, saying "Therefore, whoever had the final say-so on the beat selection is the main culprit for the failings on the album - if it was Joe Budden himself, then more shame him, because he also turns in a superb lyrical performance that rap fans will appreciate as one of the most interesting efforts in recent hip hop history."