When planning for a home theater installation, it’s easy to spend most of your time thinking about the display and speakers. After all, you can’t have a home theater without picture and sound. But these elements are only two of a multitude of others that make a home theater truly epic.
The truth is that even the biggest display and most powerful speakers can’t outperform a poor home theater design. If you want an awesome theater room in your Phoenix, AZ home, don’t overlook the following design elements that are critical to the comfort and performance of your home theater.
SEE ALSO: Integrating the Latest Video and Audio into Home Theater Design
AV Furniture
Home theaters are used for activities like movie marathons and video gaming, which keep you in one seat for hours at a time. These activities require seating that’s designed for long-term comfort and support, or else you’ll miss out on the entertainment trying to relieve a strained neck or back.
Theater seats are designed for hours-long comfort, with head, back, and foot support to help alleviate body aches. They’re constructed with high-density foam padding and feature power recline functionality so you can adjust them to your liking. What’s more, home theater seating from Salamander Designs and Fortress Seating come in many styles! Choose traditional recliners, loungers, sectionals, and more.
AV cabinetry is another critical type of AV furniture to consider for your home theater or media room if you store AV components in a credenza or armoire. Unlike a typical cupboard, media cabinets are designed to provide ample ventilation for your gear. They also feature removable rear panels for easy access and can even enhance audio performance by isolating AV components from vibration.
Acoustical Treatments
When sound leaves your speakers and finds your ears, you’re hearing a combination of direct sound from your speakers and reflected sound that has bounced off surfaces and objects in your home theater. If room acoustics aren’t considered when designing your home theater, you could end up with a distorted audio experience, including harsh high frequencies, droning bass, and other imbalances.
Acoustical treatments improve the acoustic quality of your home theater by regulating sound reflections and eliminating frustrating audio issues. Because room and speaker layout vary per home, you may need an assortment of treatments, like acoustic panels, diffuser panels, and bass traps. For the best results, work with a home theater designer like Wipliance to install the right treatments in the right places.
Light Control
Natural and artificial light can ruin an otherwise immersive viewing experience by throwing a glare on the screen or washing out your picture. However, a pitch-black home theater can be a safety hazard and make finding the remote or anything else nearly impossible. Proper light control is critical to creating a movie-watching environment that enhances the picture while providing a safe space for you to navigate.
If your home theater has windows, consider adding room-darkening motorized shades that you can quickly lower with a button tap or voice command when you’re ready to watch something. Dual roller shades are another great option, which combine a light-filtering front shade for daytime relaxing and a blackout back shade that blocks natural light when you want to watch a movie.
A lighting control system also puts precise control of artificial lights at your fingertips. Using a mobile app, wall keypad, remote, or voice command, activate a scene that turns off overhead lights, dims accent lights, and illuminates walkway and under-seat lights in one fell swoop when it’s movie time.
Even better, incorporate your lights, shades, and AV devices into a Control4 home automation system for a more simplified and enhanced entertainment experience. Control4 gives you the power to wrangle all your devices using one platform so you can do away with several switches, cords, and remotes.
Our Home Theater Designers Are Here to Help
Wipliance is the premier home theater designer and installer in the Phoenix, AZ area and would love to help you plan your home theater project or upgrade. To learn more about our services, contact us here or message us in the chat box below. We look forward to hearing from you.
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