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. Follow these tips for creating a movie room in your home. When the home movie room shares space with other activities, the cinematic experience is lessened. When the non-dedicated home theater shares open floor plan space with the kitchen, cooking sounds and smells invade. When the movie room is the living room, other people may interfere and light is difficult to control. With most home remodeling, you’re always trying to add more natural light. Home movie rooms are spaces where you want to do the exact opposite. You want less light, not more. Light-bleed kills video projection images. Even flat screens, which are far brighter, benefit from lower room lighting. On the video projector side, you will need a projector with a high lumens rating if you have some ambient light that you cannot control. But the best way to deal with ambient light is simply to stop it before it starts, by choosing a space that already has little light, such as a basement. If you cannot do this, limit the light with light-blocking curtains and shades. 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 theater’s audio. Establishing a dedicated space is the first step to controlling outside noise. But you do need to take it a few steps beyond that:
Soundproof your room by adding a second layer of drywall or replacing it with special sound-reducing foam or wallboard like QuietRock. Replace your hollow-core doors with solid doors. Put up thicker curtains that both block light and absorb sound. Seal cracks with caulk.
Source components such as a Blu-ray player, cable box, network media streaming box (like Roku), and home theater tuner will operate from here. 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. It may not be best to put the A/V rack components on a GFCI outlet unless required by electrical code. Metal A/V racks are available for purchase that are open-air in front and back. You can build your own A/V rack, as well. The rack needs to be sturdy enough to hold the electronics. It also should be open in front, back, and even the sides, if possible. Use a metal grid as a platform for the electronic devices to promote ventilation. Older commercial theaters 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 2x6 or 2x8 boards set on edge. Three-quarter inch interior grade plywood forms the top, and carpeting goes on top of the plywood. 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. Small recessed lights may be added to the bottoms of the soffits or in the ceiling to shine downward to form the classic home theater look. Keep the majority of these lights behind the viewer to avoid degrading the viewing experience. This means that your paint should be kept to flatter sheens, preferably matte or flat. Shiny doorknobs, hinges, light fixtures, recessed light trim kits, countertops, heating registers, and fireplace inserts should all be avoided in the crucial zone between the screen and the viewer. If you do have reflective objects, consider reducing their shininess by spray-painting them with dark-colored matte paint. With outlet and light switch wall covers, lightly sand them 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. Distance from the screen is determined by room size in conjunction with 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 theater seats costing thousands. Any comfortable seat that faces forward, without a high back to obstruct viewers behind you, will do the job.
Even if wall-to-wall carpeting isn’t your thing, you’ll love it for your home theater since it reduces audio-bounce. Draperies and other soft materials can be installed on the walls. Soft, cushiony seating absorbs sound better than furniture with hard elements. Picture frames with glass bounce back sound. Consider framing those pictures and posters without glass.
The days of the entirely self-contained home theater are gone. You may retain your Blu-ray player to show discs. 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 theater audio systems throw signals to the speakers wirelessly. Movie screens can be manually lowered and raised. Or you can invest in an electric movie screen that lowers and raises at the touch of a button. Where can you display your vintage movie posters? In the back of the movie room, where they aren’t visual distractions. Projector suspension mounts have gimbals that allow you to tilt the projector to perfectly fit the image on the screen. Home movie rooms even benefit from darker ceilings near the screen. White is usually the color recommended for ceilings because it reflects maximum light. But with home movie rooms, light reflection is not desirable. So, consider toning down the color of the ceiling with a gray or another neutral paint color. Your room may have certain egress requirements that prevent you from closing up all of the windows in the room. Check with your local permitting department.
