Don’t Overlook These 4 Elements in Your Home Theater Installation

Which features in a home theater draw your attention most? You’re likely thinking of the projector screen and surround sound. While the display and speakers are integral to any movie experience, they’re only two of many elements that make a home theater great.

Elements like lighting, seating, acoustic treatment, and room control significantly impact the quality and performance of a home theater. If you attempt a home theater installation and forget about these features, you may end up with a lackluster result.

Let’s dive deeper into the value these elements add to your home theater Westchester County, NY.

SEE ALSO: Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Plan Your Custom Home Theater

 

Lighting

Lighting control is critical in any movie-watching environment. There’s a reason why movie theaters are dark and don’t have windows. Not only does a dark room help set the mood for an immersive movie experience, but it also keeps the picture bright, vibrant, and clear.

Your projector screen works by reflecting light from the projector to your eyes, but it can also reflect other light sources in the room. As a result, artificial lighting from fixtures and sunlight from windows can wash out your picture and make it hard to see.

Make sure the lighting in your home theater is dimmable so you can darken the room while providing just enough light for safety. If your home theater has windows, cover them with room-darkening shades to keep out sunlight and lighting from neighboring homes and streetlamps.

Seating

Before purchasing a standard living room couch as your seating, think about how you’ll use your home theater. Unlike a living room, home theaters are meant for long uninterrupted entertainment and require specialized seating that can support you for several hours.

Don’t risk discomfort by overlooking your seating. Instead, choose ergonomic home theater seats that feature high-density foam cores, recline capability, and foot and head support to keep you comfortable over long stretches of time. Home theater seats come in various styles and fabrics to suit your interior design and ideal seating arrangement.

Acoustic Treatments

Acoustic treatments help absorb and diffuse sound to improve the acoustic quality of your home theater. Without them, you might experience problems like harsh high frequencies, muddy bass, and poor speech intelligibility—no matter how great your speakers are.

Because the audio you hear in your home theater is a mixture of direct and reflected sound, the objects and surfaces that make up the space greatly impact how you experience sound during a movie. Acoustic foam panels, bass traps, and other installments are necessary to help control untamed echoes, audio hot spots, and other issues that can arise in an acoustically untreated room.

Room Control

Unfortunately, home theater installations that overlook integrated room control are a hassle to operate. Wouldn’t you prefer to walk in, sit down, tap a button, and start the show? Rather than messing with several remotes, video sources, and input settings, opt for a smart control system like Savant or Crestron that connects all your technology into one platform for quick and simple access to everything you need.

In fact, you can even create a one-tap scene called “Movie” that dims the lights, closes the motorized shades, powers on your home theater system, and starts the film with a button press. When you want to adjust the volume, press pause, bring up the lights, or change the movie, you can do all that and more from an intuitive mobile app, remote, or tabletop touchscreen.

Get the most out of your home theater experience by working with a professional installer like Phoenix Audio Video. Learn more about our dedicated home theater services and solutions by calling (203) 338-0706 or contacting us here. We look forward to hearing from you!