How To Create An Incredible Home Cinema Experience


Visit your local cinema today and you are likely to be flabbergasted by the ticket prices, astounded at the cost of concessions and assailed on all sides by audience members chatting, chucking popcorn and checking their smartphones. It is no wonder that more people are choosing to set up a home cinema which delivers all the thrills and spills of the big screen, but with none of the other annoyances. There is an art to creating the perfect home cinema room. It is not as simple as splashing out on the biggest screen and best sound system and hoping for the best; you need to approach this project with care and perhaps seek the assistance of experts to get the job done to a high standard. 

Size Matters 
Before you do anything else, you will need to look at how much room you have to work with. This will impact everything from the projector you choose to the layout of the seating. Go too big and you might end up overwhelming the space and making it difficult to enjoy the viewing experience. Go too small and you will have wasted an opportunity to bring movie magic to life effectively. If you have an entire room available to dedicate to your home cinema, then you can be a bit more flexible in your initial decision-making, but enlisting the help of home cinema designers can be a smart move so you make the best use of the space. They will help you to do things like consider where to position the equipment and take into account the location of any power outlets too. If you are starting from scratch and choosing to include a home cinema room in a new build project, it is important to work with the builder or architect to get the dimensions right. This is not just about making room for the screen and the audience, but also factoring in the audio experience. Ideally you should opt for a shape called a ‘trapagon’ which will do justice to the sound effects, dialogue and score. Other less irregular and thus more achievable and affordable room shapes are also worth considering. If you are going to be annexing a smaller portion of a room which is used for more than just watching movies, things get a little trickier. The good news is that with the right hardware, you can enjoy a convincing cinematic experience even if the setup is intended to be used temporarily. A short throw projector which can be placed close to the surface of the screen will be your greatest ally here. 

Sound Decisions 
Most movie buffs will opt for surround sound when setting up a home cinema room. But again, even the best speaker system in the world will need to be correctly configured to deliver decent results. In a custom built room you may have the luxury of making a recess in the wall behind the screen which can house the left, right and centre speakers, along with the subwoofer. This will keep them out of view, make the space look less cluttered and provide optimal audio performance, so long as the material of the screen you pick is acoustically transparent. Whatever your setup, positioning the speakers is a crucial task. For example, the left and right speakers at the front are best placed in line with the ears of the audience where possible. If they are lower, higher or obstructed in any way, the sound quality will suffer. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions and you should be on the right track. A 5.1 surround sound system will be adequate for the majority of people, although audio enthusiasts might instead pick a 7.1 solution to maximise their immersion in their favourite films. The biggest impact will be felt when watching modern blockbusters, although old classics can be enlivened with the right audio setup as well. Even smartphones are beginning to offer surround sound, so there is no excuse for missing out at home. 

Final Furnishings 
If you are going to spend hours on end sat in your home cinema room, you want to be comfortable and content at all times. Getting distracted by a dodgy seating position or squirming on a saggy sofa is not ideal. Firstly, think about how far the viewers are going to be from the screen itself. The larger its dimensions, the greater the distance you will need between it and the first row of seating. A smaller but nevertheless respectably proportioned 75 inch screen will work best if the audience is around three metres away. Up this to 3.8 metres for a 100 inch screen, or 5.7 metres for a 150 inch screen. The display resolution of the projector you pick will play some part in determining this distance; a modern 4K unit will provide much better clarity than an older 1080p model. If you want the footage to look crisper up close, you will need to spend a little more money. The furniture itself should give you pause for thought. Do you want to choose a sociable multi-person couch or select individual cinema-style seats which have their own integrated cup holders for that authentic cinema look? If you are going for a multi-row setup, you will also need to consider raising the rear row of seats on a platform so that the screen is visible to those at the back. 

The definition of the perfect home cinema will differ from person to person. But an incredible cinematic experience that can be shared night after night is achievable on a range of budgets. You just need to plan the project thoroughly and work with the space you have available.