20 Apr Home Theater Design Ideas
The debate is on: if you want the best home theater, should you have a dedicated, purpose designed room for your audio video system, or a multi-purpose home entertainment room that doubles as a family room, den, or even breakfast nook? I addressed pros and cons of multipurpose rooms in my last blog, so let’s talk about dedicated rooms.
The primary benefit of a purpose-designed room is that it’s the correct size and shape for best acoustics and furniture layout. Acoustic treatment in and on walls and ceilings will tune and isolate the sound from your home stereo system. Great sound in the room and isolation from other rooms are both easy to achieve. Windows are not an issue because they are not part of the design of a purpose built theater room. Home theater seating furniture like rows of seats with platforms under the rear rows provide excellent viewing angles for all. So from a performance standpoint the dedicated theater room is the ultimate way to go.
Another benefit: You have a host of possible home theater design ideas you can incorporate to make it even more enjoyable. These touches include custom mill work on walls and ceiling, a wet bar in the rear section behind the rows of seats, fiber optic ceiling and other home theater accessories, along with fun elements like a ticket booth or snack bar. You can even create a theme theater with complete custom interior, giving you a huge variety of styles and options to choose from.
There are downsides. Dedicated home theater setups are more expensive than multipurpose rooms. The price tag is typically $25,000 at a minimum and can easily be ten times that much. Also, the location of the dedicated room is frequently in a remote area of the basement, or a converted attic space. So the convenience factor of getting everybody into the home theater chairs may be lower than the multi purpose rooms. When you get down to it, the dedicated room with home theater seats is really designed to optimize the viewing experience and to exceed the movie watching experience of a commercial theater. But this comes at the expense of social interaction.
Still can’t decide whether to go multi-purpose or dedicated? Consider a hybrid theater room. These include the best design elements of both types of rooms and are very popular with our home theater customers throughout Northern New Jersey, including Alpine and Short Hills.