Have you been wondering how you can improve your watching experience?
Watching movies has become such a great pastime while we all stay home. A home theater is the best investment for your movie experience. It’s a room where you can enjoy a movie with maximum comfort, light, sound, and viewing.
If you’re wondering how you’ll go about designing a home theater, then you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn six things you need to consider while you build your home theater.
Table of Contents
1. Room Size and Design
Designing a home theater means you need a dedicated room with a practical layout. The overall room size will dictate a large portion of your planned design elements. This includes your flooring, furniture, screen size, and seating arrangements.
Normally, you can watch TV in your main living room, bedroom, or kitchen. However, these spaces have windows and lack enough space for essential theater elements.
Sharing the home theater space with other activities means a lessened cinematic experience. An open floor place can bring in distractions, like loud noises and smells coming from the kitchen. It will also be harder to deal with playful children and outside light.
The best room size depends on your equipment and placement. Working in a bigger room means you get more space for furniture and extra features. Small rooms mean that you have to lessen the furniture with smaller items.
Pick a room with fewer windows for less light and sound distortions. Go for rectangular rooms since they produce better sound projections. Square rooms often produce irregular harmonic distortions, which lessens sound quality.
Spare bedrooms are great, but a basement is the better choice for building a home theater. There are little to no windows, and the sound won’t travel far when underground. The ideal theater room involves enough seating space with one door and no windows.
2. Sound System
The home theater sound system is an essential factor in having a great movie experience. Creative a great sound quality is more than having an expensive set of speakers.
Consider investing in speakers that allow you to listen to certain environments. For example, you hear the sound of a train passing through from one speaker to the other. If you want to experience this, don’t choose the speakers with a bipole or dipole label.
Another factor in improving your sound quality is speaker placement. A home theater typically features 5.1 surround sounds. This means having one low-range specialist and five full-range speakers.
You have to place the specialist, usually a woofer, and three speakers at the front of the room. Place the remaining two behind your viewing point on either side of the wall. Make sure you keep the speakers at least 18 to 20 inches away from the wall.
Don’t forget to invest in a center front speaker for projecting the sounds from the movie. It’s better that the dialogue stays in only one speaker rather than moving around.
3. Lighting
Why did we state earlier that it’s better to get a room with fewer windows? Ambient lights can kill the quality of projection images or reflect off of your TV screens. It’s best to cover your windows with drapes that block sunlight and other outside light.
When it comes to the home theater lights, opt for adjustable or dimmable ones. These are the lights where you can control the intensity of the lights. Dimmable lights are the best choice to create mood lighting similar to real theaters.
Be sure to limit all reflective objects in your home theater. Remove shiny doorknobs, countertops, light fixtures, and other shiny objects. You can paint over reflective items with matte or flat colors.
4. Viewing and Seating
To maximize comfortability, invest in elite HTS or home theater seating. You can go for armchairs or sofas to place in your home theater. However, there is a larger area of seating choices available in the market today.
You can opt for motorized reclining models to individual chairs. Customize your seats with different materials, from soft fabrics to leather. You can also invest in extra features like cupholders or snack trays.
Aside from your seating, you also need to consider your viewing screen and distance. Home theater experts state that the optimum viewing angle stays between 30 to 40 degrees. This angle lets you see all the action with little to no eye movement while watching.
Be sure to consider the distance from the screen and the seats. Calculate 1.5 to 2.5 times your screen’s diagonal width to find the best viewing distance. For example, a 60-inch TV means the seats should stay closer than 7.5 feet but no more than 12.5.
5. Flow of Signals
Your overall theater experience depends on the flow of your wires and data. Minimize seeing any wires that extend from the front of the room to the sides and the back. You can keep them hidden using soffits to prevent removing or destroying the wires.
Opt for wireless devices to make it easier for you to control everything with one remote. Find a way where you can control everything from the TV to the thermostat with one device.
6. Walls and Floor
Your wall material can affect the sound quality of your watching experience. Insulating your walls can help absorb sound bounce from the sound effects of the movie. Cover the room with a few materials like thick curtains, carpets, and acoustic boards.
Opt for darker materials to minimize light and mimic a real theater. Bright materials will take your attention away from the screen.
Sound also bounces off of your floor and other flat, hard surfaces. Opt for rugs, carpet tiles, or home theater carpet to complete your space. Cover the entire floor with something soft to get the best comfort and sound quality.
Optimize Designing a Home Theater
Designing a home theater needs proper planning and budgeting. Be sure to plan out which room you’ll use and how you’ll sort the furniture and equipment. Enjoy your home theater by picking the right sound system, room size, tools, TV, and seats.
Are you looking for more helpful guides like this? Browse through our other articles today!
It was really helpful how you talked about sound design as something that home theaters should really get right. Since my family also wants to watch concerts and musical performances there, I can bet this would be an extremely important factor for us. I’ll consult an audio-visual expert when we begin that project so we can get the right equipment.