There is no greater joy in life than having a large home theatre in the comfort of your home. Why brave traffic, stand in lines for movie tickets and deal with noisy movie-goers when you can watch the best feature films and TV shows at home on a luxurious recliner while devouring buttery popcorn?
Now that you’ve decided to bring the cinematic experience home, it’s time to design your home theatre. It is much easier said than done since there are various things to consider before building a home theatre system. It’s essential to plan your set-up, do adequate research on the available TVs and sound systems in the market and select the best décor to enhance your viewing experience.
Building a movie room can often be the true endpoint of home remodelling. Once you have concluded the practical work of fixing windows and installing floors, it’s time to reach deeper into the bank account and lavish attention on more critical matters: your entertainment needs. After all, who doesn’t need a home movie room?
A home movie room is not a sofa and a screen in a room. If you want to do this right, you’ll want to meet some bare minimums, like controlling outside light and casting a large enough picture. Requirements apply both to video projectors and screens and large, flat-screen TVs.
Size Of The Room
Before doing anything, it is important to choose which room you’d like to convert into your home theatre. Most of the time, TV is watched in the living room, kitchen or bedroom. However, these rooms have windows. Windows not only allow sunlight to seep into the room but also dim the viewing experience. Glass windows reflect sound and light. Hearing Norman Bates knife Marion in “Psycho” may not seem horrific with sunlight.
The basement is the best room to set up your home theatre system since it has the ideal room size, can be rewired easily, has few or no windows, and the sound is unlikely to travel to the neighbour’s home.
The ideal room is large enough to seat several people has one door and no windows.
Height Of The Ceiling
Typically, a high-ceiling room is excellent for watching Khaleesi ride her ginormous dragons in “Game of Thrones.” Nevertheless, you can set up your theatre even in a room with a low ceiling, such as the basement. Opt for a large LED or LCD TV over a screen and projector.
Now that you’ve selected the room, it’s time to use this super-useful home theatre equipment checklist to see if you have all the devices necessary to binge-watch the new season of “House of Cards.” The checklist includes LED and LCD television, surround sound, a Blu-ray DVD player, an Internet connection to stream your favourite movies and shows, a digital video recorder, cable, etc.
While you may be tempted to splurge on a good surround sound system and a high-quality audio/video receiver (AVR), it’s important to compare and contrast different brands before shelving more money. For example, surround sound seems like a good idea on the surface, but it requires you to invest in expensive wireless speakers or lining speaker wires under the plush carpet. In that case, a budget-friendly subwoofer would be a wiser purchase.
Soundproofing
Unless you’re comfortable with your neighbours frequently complaining of noise or waking up your child while watching the latest “The Walking Dead” season at night, it’s vital to soundproof your home theatre. That means installing acoustic wall panels to block the noise and carpeting the room from wall to wall to kick back and enjoy a disruption-free viewing of the latest comedy flick.
Good old drywall is also a good way to soundproof your expensive new home theatre. Add in some plush drapes a nice long carpet, and you’ve got yourself the perfect home-based cinema.
Screen Distance
No amount of palatial furnishings will enrich your viewing experience, like setting up the TV at an ideal distance from your seating area. If your plasma is too close, you’ll begin to see the pixels on the screen. If it’s too far, you’ll squint your eyes and miss out on the finer picture details in the movie. The thumb rule is that screen distance should be 1.5 to 2 times the diagonal width of the screen. So, if you have a 48-inch LED HD TV (diagonally measured), you should ideally place the seating area no more than 8 feet or 96 inches from the screen (two times 48).
You can also use the screen distance the other way around – You can take measurements of the length of your room and calculate the size of the TV you need to purchase.
Furthermore, the display of your screen should be at your eye level. Too high, the TV hovers over your head, too low, and you’ll be craning your neck. But, again, it’s just common sense.
Also, it’s essential to note that many retail stores’ lighting might trick you into thinking certain TVs give clearer picture quality than others. For example, plasma TVs are good, but in-store lighting their picture quality seems dull. So instead of just talking to an employee itching to reach his sales target, consider comparing specs of various TVs online. For example, a 4K ultra HD is different from a plasma TV. Here’s an extensive buying guide to help you out.
Comfortable Seating
One of the best parts of watching a movie on a large screen isn’t just taking in the magnificent performance of the actors on a massive display. Instead, it’s seeing motion pictures come to life on an elegant, cosy and slightly oversized recliner.
Investing in a three, six or nine-seater recliner with metallic cup holders and storage space for magazines will refine the 360-degree viewing experience. No one wants to watch a movie on sturdy, uncomfortable chairs.
Lighting
As stated earlier, glass is a big no-no because it reflects, rather than absorbs, sound and light. You may be tempted to flaunt fancy art framed in glass. Don’t do that. The dialogues will tend to echo.
It is a good idea to black them out if you have windows. Of course, you could use curtains and drapes to block sunlight, but you’ll have to close and open them. Blacking out the windows is a better long-term solution.
Wall Colours
You may be tempted to paint your walls red or add a splash of yellow to make the home theatre room lively. While bright colours do wonders in up lighting the atmosphere of a room, it does nothing for improving the viewing experience. Bright colours reflect light and distract you from admiring the movie’s setting.
Opt for neutral colours such as cream and shades of brown over yellow or bright purple.
Surge Protectors
It is pertinent to buy a high-quality surge protector. These useful devices protect your home-based cinema from electrical spikes and surges. Think about it: You’ve got more than five electronic devices fitted in the room. A spike in the electric current or a sudden power outage could destroy your TV, surround sound or projector. If your home isn’t fitted with a surge protection system, it’s time to find one for your home theatre.
One Remote Control For Everything
Last but certainly not least, you can use a single Logitech Harmony remote control to control all the devices in your home theatre system. Why have five or six different remotes when you can have one. Moreover, you can set it up on your phone or laptop and use voice control to activate or deactivate devices.
Make Your Movie Room A Dedicated Space
A dedicated home movie room is a space solely dedicated to watching videos on a big screen. It means that little else happens in that home movie room except for screening-related activities. And today, screening means far more than it ever did, with streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, BluRay movies, video gaming, and conventional cable TV.
When the home movie room shares space with other activities, the cinematic experience is lessened. For example, when the non-dedicated home theatre shares open floor plan space with the kitchen, cooking sounds and smells invade. In addition, other people may interfere when the movie is in the living room, and light is difficult to control.
Control Ambient Light
Ambient light is unwanted light. Ambient light means light from sources outside of the movie room, like light coming from windows, under and around doors, and from artificial light within the room.
With most home remodelling, you’re always trying to add more natural light. However, home movie rooms are spaces where you want to do the opposite. You want less light, not more.
Light-bleed kills video projection images. Far brighter and even flat screens benefit from lower room lighting.
You will need a projector with a high lumens rating on the video projector side if you have some ambient light that you cannot control. But the best way to deal with ambient light is to stop it before it starts by choosing a space with little light, such as a basement. Limit the light with light-blocking curtains and shades if you cannot do this.
Control Ambient Sound
Ambient sound is the unwanted sound coming from outside your home movie room. Even if you manage to find a dedicated space for your home theatre, sounds from outside of that space often ruin the viewing experience.
The dishwasher, clothes washers and dryers, people in other rooms, kitchen noises, plumbing noises, and sounds from outside the house are just a few examples of ambient sounds that can crash in and destroy your home theatre’s audio.
Build A Proper A/V Component Rack
The audio-visual component rack, or A/V rack, is the central point for your source components. Consider the A/V rack as the central brain that controls all entertainment-related activities in the movie room.
Source components such as a BluRay player, cable box, network media streaming box (like Roku), and home theatre tuner will operate.
The A/V rack (or stack) must be located near an electric outlet, and you should be able to bring in an Ethernet source wire for a reliable, unbroken connection.
Properly Ventilate A/V Rack
The A/V component rack should be well-ventilated since components create heat and can be damaged if the heat build-up is excessive.
Metal A/V racks are available for purchase that are open-air in front and back. But, of course, you can build your A/V rack.
The rack needs to be sturdy enough to hold the electronics. It should also be open in front, back, and even the sides if possible. Use a metal grid as a platform for electronic devices to promote ventilation.
Make The Movie Room Look Like A Cinema
What is your vision of a home movie room? For some homeowners, it’s the classic movie theatre with red velvet walls, sconce lights, tiered seating, and a popcorn maker.
Older commercial theatres have sloped floors, and contemporary ones have elaborate, steeply tiered seating.
Home cinema seat tiering is relatively simple to build with a framework of joists of two-by-six or two-by-eight boards set on edge. Three-quarter inch interior grade plywood forms the top, and carpeting goes on top of the plywood.
Plan A Robust, Flexible Lighting System
Cinema light control means the ability to turn lights on and off or to graduate that light within the cinema space.
Soffits, rope lights, dimmers, and recessed lights form the backbone of many owner-built home movie rooms. Soffits are long trays near the ceiling that run around the room’s perimeter and are often inlaid with rope lights.
You may add small recessed lights to the bottoms of the soffits or the ceiling to shine downward to form the classic home theatre look. Keep most of these lights behind the viewer to avoid degrading the viewing experience.
Limit Reflective Objects
Anything that isn’t the screen itself and reflects light at the viewer should be minimised or avoided.
It would be best to keep your paint to flatter sheens, preferably matte or flat. Likewise, it would be best to avoid shiny doorknobs, hinges, light fixtures, recessed light trim kits, countertops, heating registers, and fireplace inserts in the crucial zone between the screen and the viewer.
If you have reflective objects, consider reducing their shininess by spray-painting them with dark-coloured matte paint. For example, lightly sand them with outlet and light switch wall covers with fine-grit sandpaper to reduce the glossiness, then clean them off well. Follow with two light coats of matte spray paint.
An even easier idea is to sand the wall covers and not paint them. Sanding removes the visually troublesome gloss.
Plan For Proper Viewing And Seating
No one in the movie room should have their view of the screen blocked or be too close or too far away. Tiered seating is a true luxury and one that you can only accomplish in a dedicated cinema space. The problem of blockage is solved by raising rear seats on a platform. Even a modest 6-inch boost can be enough to clear the sightlines.
Distance from the screen is determined by room size and the size of the picture you want to display. For flat-screen TVs, your small converted bedroom space might be able to accommodate up to a 55-inch screen before the closest row of viewers begins to feel overwhelmed.
Seating does not need to be specialty home theatre seats costing thousands. Any comfortable seat that faces forward, without a high back to obstruct viewers behind you, will do the job.
Plan For The Flow Of Signals
Your entertainment experience depends on the flow of data. This data is carried by wires and through the air.
The days of the entirely self-contained home theatre are gone. However, you may retain your BluRay player to show disks. In fact, since few of the older shows are being transmitted in 4Kor HD streaming formats, the only way to see them in crystal-clear resolution is on BluRay.
Still, more and more entertainment is delivered through hard-wired connections and wi-fi signals. Wires need to be hidden as much as possible. Wires that extend to the front and sides of the home movie room can be hidden in the soffits. Some home theatre audio systems throw signals to the speakers wirelessly.
Conclusion
So, how do you design the best home theatre? It’s not as difficult as it may seem. You need to consider your needs and preferences and the limitations of your space. We hope this article has helped provide some guidance on how to get started with creating your perfect home theatre.
Faqs
What Is The Best Size Room For A Home Theatre?
Choose a room at least 15 feet wide and 20 feet long, and you should have a good basis to start building your home theatre. However, you may be cramped if you opt to go smaller than this minimum home theatre room size.
What Is The Best Sound Setting For A Home Theatre?
A good 5.1-channel system will give you a full surround sound experience. Most DVD and Blu-ray™ media, some Super Audio CDs (SACDs), broadcast TV, and many streaming sources are in 5.1-channel format. Going to 7.1 channels improves the directionality of sound effects and helps you feel more of your entertainment.
What Makes A Good Sound System?
The best speakers recreate sound very accurately. In other words, they don’t colour the sound by changing it. So ideally, you hear a sound—a trumpet run, a monologue, a gunshot—as intended by whoever recorded it.
How Do I Build A 7.1 Surround Sound System?
A 7.1 surround sound set-up has two front speakers, a subwoofer, a centre channel, two surround speakers, and two rear speakers. You should place rear speakers behind the listener at a 135-150-degree angle with this set-up.
How Big Should A Room Be For A 7.1 Surround?
If it’s larger than 350 square feet, consider a 7.1 speaker set-up. If it’s smaller, a 5.1 may be more appropriate.