A Guide to Creating your Perfect Home Cinema

A complete custom home cinema is the perfect way to add a space in your home that feels completely separate to the rest of the house. A haven to sit and switch off from the world for a few hours.

When designed and created properly, a home cinema is a luxury addition to your home and inevitably adds value to the property.

Wasted space in your home, like an empty basement, unused garage or spare bedroom makes for the perfect space to add in a home theatre, maximising the use of your property.

The home cinema process – how it works

Specialised engineers and designers will work with you from start to finish, taking the pressure off and allowing you to enjoy the experience just as much as you do the end product.

At Trusted Technology, we work closely with each and every one of our clients to complete projects to the highest standard, reaching way beyond your expectations.

We have been creating luxurious and relaxing home cinemas for the last decade and as technology is ever-evolving, we are constantly testing the latest tech to improve the services we offer and create the luxury home cinema you deserve.

Having guidance throughout the making of your home cinema is the best way to avoid making one of the many common home cinema mistakes. Many homeowners buy technology based on looks, not performance, install screens of the wrong size, design a poor seating arrangement and wire an improper speaker setup.

We’ve put together this guide of the most important things to consider when designing your home cinema.

Plan your home cinema from start to finish

The key to any successful project is a well-thought-out and detailed plan. As mundane and simple as it sounds, without careful planning, the success of a project is almost guaranteed to suffer.

Planning helps to identify what the desired outcome is for a client. Plus, it helps to reduce the risk of creating something they are not 100% happy with. Curating a solid plan helps companies like us to deliver the agreed result and avoid missing important deadlines for our clients. Like with any plan though, we leave room for flexibility – so if you decide you want to make some changes, you can.

Luckily, for clients of Trusted Technology, we take care of the planning. All we need is an initial meeting to discuss your ultimate goals, budget and timeline. This information will be used by our designers to create a 3D render of your home cinema, allowing you to be fully immersed in the virtual reality experience to see how amazing the end product will be. Once we have the go-ahead from you, you can leave it in the hands of the professionals without worrying about a thing, getting on with your usual daily routine.

Choosing the perfect location for your home cinema

It is important that you choose the right location to start building your dream home cinema.

There are plenty of different places in the home you can make into a cinema room. Spare bedrooms, loft conversions or unused garages are all great options. Where possible, you want to find a space that minimises natural light getting in, and ideally somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the home.

Whilst a dark room improves picture quality and makes the sound and light performance easier to control, not everyone has a spare room, basement or loft space to transform, and cinema rooms are changing to accommodate that.

We are mindful that some people need a more versatile space to use when it isn’t functioning as a cinema room. This element is close to our heart, which is why we want to design spaces that you actually enjoy spending time in. Perhaps your home theatre is more of a media room that can be used for a variety of activities.

The size of the room is also important when choosing a location in the home. Our designers at Trusted Technology take into consideration how many people you wish to accommodate and advise you on seating requirements.

Keep in mind that there are numerous different pieces of furniture to install in a home cinema. Seating and technical equipment, as well as any additional items you wish to add, take up a fair amount of space.

Consider your seating arrangement carefully

Seating is crucial to consider. This will be discussed in the planning stages as going wrong with the seating arrangements can ruin the whole cinematic experience.

Carefully think through how many people you want to be able to seat, the style and size of the seats you want, and how to implement that seating arrangement within your space. The last thing you want is uncomfortable seats with an obstructed view.

Trusted Technology has a great partnership with joiners, carpenters and upholsters to custom-build your furniture. You can work with them to maximise the space you have with perfectly fitted furniture. As well as choosing your own custom design and premium finishes.

Choose audio and visual systems to fit your space

This next guideline is something that the designers and engineers will make recommendations for. They’ll guide you in the right direction according to your wants and needs. Many companies will offer a variety of options for both audio and visual systems varying in size, technology and price.

The in-house engineers will handpick the perfect projector to provide a superb viewing experience with stunning cinematic detail. What’s more, they’ll pair it with acoustically transparent screens to hide the speakers (exactly how it’s done at the cinema) and top of the range audio systems. We will model your room to ensure the correct quantity of speakers is used to give a truly immersive experience.

In terms of ‘fitting the space’ having heavy and bulky equipment isn’t ideal for smaller spaces. Designers will choose the equipment on a client-to-client basis to ensure everything flows smoothly and fits the designated space perfectly.

As a technology company, we despise seeing a cinema room design with all of the wires on show. There are plenty of ways to disguise these behind other equipment or to hide them with the decor – consider this when choosing your equipment.

Lighting is key

You can have as much fancy equipment and furniture as you like but if you get the lighting wrong it will all be for nothing. Lighting is pivotal for setting the mood. You can create the most memorable and immersive experiences in your home cinema with the correct lighting design and installation.

Having lighting control is also helpful so you can change the intensity depending on the genre of the movie you are watching. This also helps to prevent any light distractions. Starlit ceilings, LED floor lighting and wall panel lights are favourites for home cinemas to create that authentic cinematic feel.

At Trusted Technology, we install a range of lighting solutions and can provide all of the light fitting to replicate the render exactly. Our designers help you to choose the best lighting for the mood and ambience you wish to create – all at the touch of a button.

Decor is just as important as the technical equipment

Ultimately, you want a home cinema to provide an immersive experience and imitate what it is like to be in a cinema – a luxury one of course, without kids kicking your chair and your neck getting stiff from looking up.

The decor is extremely important as it brings all of the other design elements together. The style of the home cinema is down to the client, whether you want a contemporary modern vibe, retro, art deco or even a themed styling – it can all be achieved.

Decor considerations are things such as colour schemes, padded walls, panelling, carpet, hard flooring, poster prints, curtains, blinds, and so much more.

The designers at Trusted Technology will make recommendations based on your style requests and can bring these ideas to life with the VR element of the design and plan stage so you can see how the end product will look. Don’t worry – no construction will begin without your final approval.

Add amenities that will make the experience more comfortable

When you’ve got the basics of location, seating, lighting and technical equipment sorted, you can start to consider what amenities you want to include to make the experience as comfortable as possible.

Some people will opt for air conditioning units and heaters to suit the climate at any time of year. Others will go one step further and build a mini bar and fridge to store their all-important movie snacks and drinks.

Added accessories could include: phone charging units on the seats, recliner chairs, coffee and hot chocolate machine, popcorn maker, blanket storage, posters – anything you can think of we can do our best to incorporate it into the design.

Are you ready to start building your own luxury home cinema?

If you have a spare room in your home or wish to convert a living space into a custom-built, luxury home cinema, we’d love to hear from you.