Building a home cinema has become increasingly popular in recent years. With more companies offering a variety of bespoke, quality home cinema products at a range of budgets, bringing the movies to you has never been easier.
A lot goes into building the perfect home cinema room, and there are several decisions you’ll need to consider – from layout and lighting to seating and sound.
So whether it’s what equipment goes in a home cinema or how to soundproof a home cinema, you’ll find the answers in our How to Build a Home Cinema Room guide. Read on to create your own slice of the silver screen.
Building A Home Cinema
While a home cinema is ideally suited to experiencing Hollywood in your own house, creating a home cinema doesn’t have to be just for films. With a big screen and the right setup, you can also grab a front-row seat at the big sports match, challenge your friends to an epic gaming night or stream the latest mega-show.
Regardless of how you use it, a home cinema room is clearly much more than a big screen and a comfy chair – although no home movie night would be complete without them. For the ultimate film experience, take a look at each of these tips to kit out your little island of luxury.
What Do I Need For A Home Cinema?
Getting the basics right is obviously a must, and that starts with the space you’ve chosen for your home cinema. You’ll want to make sure the room layout is right, and you have the screen, seats, light and sound working together in harmony for full cinematic submersion.
Choosing A Home Cinema Room
If you’ve decided you’re going to build a home cinema, you’ll no doubt already have chosen the room you want to fit out. But have you decided exactly how you want this room to be used?
Ask yourself, what is the room’s function? Is it a dedicated cinema, or is it multi-use, with an important role as a living room or family space? Both can work for great, immersive cinematic experiences, but a multipurpose room will always have an element of compromise in it.
Who will be using your home cinema? Will it just be you and your family, or will you be welcoming guests over to enjoy the ride? These decisions will help guide you on your seating plan and layout.
Home Cinema Room Layout
One of the key questions when thinking about how to build a home cinema is how big the room is, and whether the space is suitable for your needs.
A rectangular-shaped room is a must if you want to balance number of viewers, screen size, ideal seating distance, viewing angles and acoustics. It also allows you greater flexibility when looking at seating arrangements. This particular point is one of the first and most important of your big decisions – it dictates how the room will be used and how many guests need to be accommodated. While square rooms can be fitted out by industry experts – or you if you’re a DIY boss – to become the optimum shape, choosing a room with the right layout in the first place will save you a heap of trouble.
Screen Size vs Numbers Of Seats
Naturally, the room’s size will dictate the magnitude of the screen and the number of seats. A screen can be too big for a room, and vice versa, but ideally the bigger the screen, the better, while still being able to watch it comfortably.
Once you’ve decided on your screen size, there are clever measurements you can use to determine how far the seats should be from the screen and therefore how many you can fit in. And this comes down to the viewing angle.
Imagine lines running from your spot on your comfy cinema seat to the far edges of the screen. The space between the two lines gives you your viewing angle. Ideally it would be no smaller than 33° and no greater than 62°. Any bigger and you will feel too close to the screen, and any smaller and you won’t be close enough to the action.
Seating Plan
Again, this comes down to how you intend to use the space – will it be a cosy room for a younger family or a relaxed zone for an older group? Each might need a very different cinema seating plan to a room used for watching sport with friends.
As we saw above, working out how to get the number of seats in your home cinema right can be tricky. Wanting as many as possible is normal but packing them in might mean the experience from every seat will be lessened if the seating doesn’t correctly fit the space. Sometimes, less is more.
There are many styles of seating available to match your room use and number of viewers. If you’ve an older family, seats in a traditional line might look the part. Younger families might benefit from a couple of big bean bags on the floor to give the kids more options. For a cinema room that will be multipurpose, a creative seating plan or informal groupings will ensure the room always works.
Of course, there are many other choices, such as soft armchairs or sofas – or both. The former is ideal for pure comfort, while the latter creates date-night vibes for couples to cosy up for a bit of romance, as well as taking up less space.
Sight lines are also an important consideration. You don’t want people’s view of the screen to be compromised, so if you’ve got a big room with more than one row, arrange them into tiers 80 cm apart, raising each subsequent row by 25–30 cm. That clearance ensures no one’s head will be obstructing the spectacle.
Should I Use A TV or Projector In My Home Cinema?
The range of options when it comes to screens these days can be daunting. But there are some easy ways to home in on what might be best for you.
TVs now provide mind-blowing visuals with crystal-clear definition and a kaleidoscope of colour. And with bezel-less screens, your viewing is less likely to be distracted than ever. You can also rely on the fact their brightness overcomes a light-filled room in a multi-use space with little loss of picture quality. What’s more, the newest releases drop in price after twelve months or so, meaning great tech that will last you for years – especially by futureproofing with 8K screens – doesn’t have to cost the earth.
Yet at some point a TV will not cut it for larger rooms – most televisions stop at 100 inches, so if you want a bigger picture, it’s time to look at projectors.
One of the advantages of projectors, apart from the massive images they can produce, is that screens can be neatly tucked away to allow multipurpose spaces to quickly be reconstituted. Electric screens can even drop down and raise at the touch of a button.
The projectors themselves are best suspended unobtrusively from the ceiling rather than sat on surfaces. These days there is no need to worry if a projector is far enough from the screen – some can throw a razor-sharp 130-inch image from less than a foot away. Generally, the more you spend, the brighter the images they produce. That said, make sure the room is dark enough to maximise the projector’s effectiveness so the image quality and contrast isn’t lost.
Sound And Speakers
Part of the joy of a night at the cinema is being soaked in a range of sounds no other entertainment medium can give you, be it the throb of a subwoofer or a cascade of reverberations running behind you and moving from one ear to the other.
Getting the sound right is a necessity if you are starting a home cinema build, and that means a surround audio system. These are speakers positioned at different locations in your home cinema room, surrounding the viewers for a fully immersive audio experience.
The golden ratio here is 5.1 – that is, five speakers placed around the room and one subwoofer, the speaker that provides the bass frequencies. You can have 6.1, 7.1, 7.2 etc. – the choice is yours. Regardless of the number, the speakers each do specialised jobs:
- Front speakers sit either side of the screen: They do the heavy lifting, being responsible for most of the sound and dividing it into left and right channels to give you more of an idea where the audio is coming from. The bigger the screen, the taller the speakers can be and the more effective that function is.
- The central speaker: This sits under a TV and can be behind a projector screen if it is acoustically transparent. This speaker is smaller and is responsible for dialogue.
- Satellite speakers: These speakers provide the surround sound. They are placed behind and/or above the viewers and provide that real taste of the cinema, dropping you into the heart of the action.
However you arrange your speakers, make sure their positioning is optimised for the room’s layout so you maximise the space’s acoustics.
Soundproofing And Acoustics
Fancy a romantic night in with the latest blockbuster? You don’t want to be interrupted by your dishwasher or the blare of the house party down the street, so think about how you’ll soundproof the room to avoid the noisy neighbours. Soundproofing is also important for keeping noise in, too, as you don’t want your film’s big action sequences to wake your kids in the other room.
While you can have the best audio system in the world, it also needs to be contained so it doesn’t bounce off the walls, ceiling and floor of your home cinema. Instead, these surfaces should absorb sound, not reflect it. Reflected noises can be a challenge for your ears to work out which sounds to pay attention to and which to filter out. Restricting sound bounce is vital to getting the perfect home movie room audio.
Happily, there are a multitude of tactics for sealing yourself off from pesky ambient noise. Here are a few:
- Add a stud wall to the room if it is big enough, enabling you to pack the space between with lots of noise-dampening insultation (also a great place to hide speakers).
- Install acoustic underlay. This will dampen audio escaping through the floor, which is particularly important when converting loft or attic spaces.
- Thick carpet on top of your underlay will give you a belt-and-braces approach to deadening sound, while also offering that unbeatable cinema look. Acoustic tiles for the ceiling are another great idea.
- Acoustic panelling, draperies, upholstery or carpet tiles on the walls are an absolute must – this will stop sound leakage in its tracks and make sure it isn’t redirected back into the room. Go for red velvet if you want your home cinema to look classy and traditional.
- Thick, lined curtains should cover any windows – a major source of sound reflection. Couple it with automated blinds if your budget can stretch to it.
- Replace any hollow doors with solid ones.
- Soft, cushiony seats absorb sound better than hard, angular furniture. Bean bags are also great sound dampeners.
- Hard surfaces are the enemy of clear audio, so remove any picture frames if possible or frame them without glass.
Any of these techniques will help you create a veritable temple of sound in your home cinema build. Of course, the more of them you use, the smoother it will be on your ears.
Ventilation
Great, you’re not going to be disturbed by any exterior loud noises, but that doesn’t mean you want to suffocate in your beautifully sound-insulated box, even a nicely lit one with comfy seats. Ventilation is important for regulating temperature and humidity and ensuring the experience is as immersive and as close to a night at the pictures as possible.
Controlling temperature using a remote device that also looks after other functions in the room will make your life easier. We’ll look at this in more detail below.
Lighting
As well as comfy seating and the smell of popcorn, the other key element that soothes the senses and gives you that feeling of anticipation for a night at the movies is the lighting. Getting this right goes a long way to nailing your home cinema room’s look and feel.
While the lights you choose are important, blocking out ambient light should be your first focus. This helps your screen do its job to the best of its ability – even the brightest OLED TVs benefit from less light. If it is unfeasible to block up windows, make sure they are all completely covered by blackout blinds or curtains so the room is as dark as possible. Motorised versions can make life simpler by allowing you to create complete darkness with the touch of a button.
Light can also leak in from your electronics, with their myriad flashing and static LEDs. Building a closed-off, ventilated A/V room will tuck all of that unwanted light away.
The amount of light can also be simply controlled by ensuring your carpeted wall tiles or furnishings are a dark colour. Any exposed areas can then be painted in duskier hues, too. Ceilings nearer the screen also benefit from darker colours to reduce glare.
Anything that isn’t the screen itself and that reflects light back at the viewer should be removed. Use matte or flat paint and avoid shiny doorknobs, hinges, switches and light fittings if you don’t want glare catching a viewer’s eye mid-film. If you cannot remove these objects, try spray-painting them with dark matte paint. Sand outlet and switch covers with fine-grit sandpaper to reduce the shine, wipe clean and spray paint.
With ambient light sorted, you’ll next need to set the mood. Dimmable lights let you customise the ambience you want to create, and smart lighting allows you to adjust the colours and intensity remotely with just the sound of your voice or a flick of a finger.
If you want the real movie theatre look, consider narrow beam spotlights above each seat, recessed lights and LED strip lighting in soffits – long trays near the ceiling that run around the room’s edge. The dimming system ensures each set of light can be adjusted to your precise preferences. Keeping most of them behind the viewer will also be less distracting.
Audio-visual Equipment
It goes with saying that your epic audio and stunning visuals need to be controlled by some electronic system. With all that tech, an appropriate amount of sockets, coaxial and internet points are a must. These days, so much content is streamed via cabled connections or over WiFi, so to never lose stable bandwidth it is best to use a solid copper ethernet port.
A home cinema receiver or A/V (audio-visual) rack can act as the central hub controlling all entertainment-related activities, including processing and amplifying sound to your speakers as well as various video inputs. The latter covers Blu-ray players, games consoles and Sky TV boxes, as well as handling various streaming platforms.
Checking your electronics are also well ventilated on open-air stands will prevent them overheating and warming the room or making a distracting humming noise.
One last consideration for your electricals will be the wiring. For a clean, professional look, it is best these are concealed. If you build a new stud wall, wires can be hidden behind. Those that extend to the front and sides of the room can be hidden in the soffits or under any tiered seating.
Control Systems
In any super-modern home cinema, part of your electronic setup might be a centralised control system for all your new bells and whistles. A central control will include functions to adjust your light dimmers and air conditioning as well as the screen and speakers from a single device. It could even be incorporated into your smart home setup.
Finishing touches
What else do you need to make your home cinema room capture some Hollywood magic? There are a number of furnishings and accessories that you can deck your place out with to put the icing on the cake.
- Sconce lights provide a classic – and classy – cinema look.
- Armchairs and sofas with cup holders, heating or USB ports offer that bit of extra luxury.
- Cinema-style curtains can add a touch of movie magic – imagine the tingle of excitement as they are raised at the start of a film.
- Popcorn and cinema go hand in hand, so add a popcorn machine for the ultimate experience. Note these can be bright and scented, so displaying it in a bespoke, hidden area might be best.
- Alongside this can go a drinks fridge or mini-bar to keep your munchies under control and beverages and snacks readily accessible.
How Much Does A Home Cinema Cost?
When looking at how much a home cinema room costs, it is entirely dependent on how much you are willing to spend. There is almost no ceiling to price, with some high-end projectors hitting six figures alone. Home cinemas are also usually unique setups, with a person’s style and needs dictating the look and layout, so even certain budgets will give you radically different looking rooms.
At the lower end, with a budget of a few thousand pounds, you can install a good screen, A/V receiver, speakers and controls in your living room or snug.
At the mid-range, a multipurpose cinema room with sofa, dimmable lights, a projector and decent screen, and surround sound will start from about £10,000.
Spending a bit more in the range of £15,000 to £40,000 can get you a two-seat luxury cinema in a good-sized room.
You can spend thousands more by finding a dedicated home cinema company to do you home cinema build, but that will inevitably cost a lot more overall. The tips in this guide will hopefully show you what is possible by considering all the options yourself, so that you can build the home cinema that is right for you.
