| Building The Basic, Badass Home Theater |
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| Home Theater Feature Articles Other | |
| Written by Jerry Del Colliano | |
| Wednesday, 01 February 2006 | |
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Page 2 of 5 Lighting and Darkness  Lighting
control is one of the most overlooked elements in the basic home
theater. With your floor plan in place with furniture and gear, take
another copy of your plan and note where your lights are currently
located. Look for places where you would like to remove lights. If you
have a floodlight right above your screen for your new DLP projector,
you would be well advised to move or remove such a light. In-ceiling
lights are very slick, but track lighting is a more affordable and
comparably effective way to get light where you need it. Consider
lighting options so that you can read a book in your favorite seat
while the rest of the room is basically dark. Consider how you will be
able to see and access your equipment rack of gear in a darkened room.
Normally, one or two spots will do the trick without ruining the mood
during a movie. Calling in a professional electrician is best in this
situation. Be sure to get a dedicated circuit for your equipment rack
with at least a quad outlet for plugging in gear.
The best way to make your picture look better in the room is to make
the room as dark as possible. This sounds simpler than it usually is,
nor is it cheap in many cases. Window treatments can cost a pretty
penny, depending on the fabric you choose. I recommend ordering
blackout drapes for your windows which use multiple layers of fabric to
absorb light. You will want to flush-mount them in a track in your
ceiling or use some sort of covering for a more traditional track.
Drapes also help your acoustical situation. A more cost-effective way
to deal with window treatments is to look to stores like Pottery Barn,
Restoration Hardware or Room & Board for pre-made drapes. Do your
measurements as though you’re doing them for NASA. It is really easy to
mess up. For a few hundred dollars, you can get nice thick drapes up
that do a suitable job of blocking light. In order to create a dark
room suitable for the best in HDTV in the middle of a summer afternoon,
I am not installing windows in the dedicated theater that I am building
onto my house in Los Angeles. I have planned spaces for windows in the
room in the event someone later wants to tear out the theater and make
it into an additional bedroom or office. Getting all of the light out
of your room costs a lot more money, but your wife might consider
window treatments to be a different budget than you AV gear
acquisitions. |
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