Do’s & Don’ts of Designing Your Dream Home Theater
When designing a home theater there are many things to consider to have an excellent sounding room as well as a beautiful looking one. Sometimes compromises must be made due to room limitations or aesthetic choices but that doesn’t mean your theater can’t sound better than the cinema in the comfort of your own home. I want to review some of the things I commonly see done that are excellent practices and some things that…. aren’t.
Home Theater Do’s-
Consider speaker positioning. Left and right speakers are ideally placed 8-12 feet apart to provide adequate separation for a wide soundstage. These are the most important speakers when it comes to listening to music. For a detailed & immersive movie experience it is critical to have a properly placed center speaker. The center needs to be positioned as close to the image as possible to allow for sound to be heard coming directly from the image.
A high quality subwoofer suited and calibrated for your uses. Quality subwoofers for movies are large and this can be an issue but if you can find the space or integrate them in hidden ways in your room they make all the difference for cinematic immersion.
Think about room lighting and how it can be controlled, especially when using a projector. Room lighting control is crucial to a high quality dynamic image and is a large factor when choosing what projection screen or TV to use.
If remodeling or building new, run Cat6 cable to every location technology might go. It’s cheap and can prevent future headaches when upgrading. Even better is to have “smurf tubes” put in critical areas to allow future wiring.
Home Theater Don'ts-
Mount your TV too high. We commonly see TVs mounted above fireplaces high above the viewers head, inches off the ceiling. This will lead to neck & back pain especially when viewing for extended periods not to mention the unfavorable viewing angles for color accuracy and light bleed. Many rooms are designed around the TV being above the fireplace making this commonplace so there are specialty mounts and precautions that can be taken to mitigate the impact of the fireplace.
Use in-ceiling speakers for the front three (right, center, and left) speakers. In-ceiling speakers will point directly at the floor making the audio and most importantly the dialogue very difficult to hear. It causes a disconnect between image & sound resulting in poor reproduction especially for television and movies.
Consider a soundbar as a replacement for a home theater system. Soundbars have their place in the living room or bedroom but for a truly immersive theater experience they just cannot compare to having separate speakers and a receiver.
This is in no way an all inclusive list of best practices or things to avoid but it may help in designing your own theater or viewing space. If you’re someone who likes to DIY and just need a little tech help with the design or programming we offer 3D rendering & wiring design in addition to full installation.