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Check Out These Expert Tips from Our Home Theater Designers

To create an epic home theater, you must think beyond the display and speakers. A well-designed theater room features many unsung heroes that help make it great: acoustic treatments, custom theater seating, strategic lighting, integrated room control, and more.

In this blog, we’re focusing on home theater lighting. When lighting is an afterthought, it can destroy an otherwise awesome movie-watching experience. If you’re building or revamping a theater room in your Chicagoland home, follow these key lighting tips from the home theater designers at Avidia!

SEE ALSO: How to Enhance Your Home Theater with Smart Lighting

Choosing the Room

Many homeowners may think that bigger is better when choosing a room for their home theater. And while size does matter if you want a fully immersive movie experience, the most important aspect of the room you choose is its dimensions. Square and oval rooms will distort your audio. The ideal room for balanced surround sound should be rectangular, with walls longer than they are wide, and high ceilings.

Placing the Display

Comfort and perception significantly enhance your viewing experience, which means your display must be placed in such a way that prevents eye or neck strain. The image on the screen should appear naturally as your eyes would see it in real life. While a general rule of thumb is to place your screen 24” to 36” inches above the floor and 1.5 to 3 times the screen height distance from your seating, the ideal measurement will be unique to your room dimensions, screen size preference, and seating options.

SEE ALSO: What to Consider When Finding the Perfect Home Projector Screen

A 2.4:1 Cinema Format Screen

First and foremost, you need a projector screen that matches the aspect ratio of the content you plan to watch. For cinephiles, that means a 2.4:1 screen. Because most of the content you’ll be watching in your home theater will be movies and streaming television, you’ll benefit most from this screen size.

You may wonder what this means for 16:9 content, like sports and news. If you also plan to use your home theater to watch the Cubs or keep up with local headlines, you could invest in two motorized retractable projector screens if you want to avoid black sidebars for the occasional 16:9 content.

Plus, when paired with a projector that features an anamorphic lens, you can automatically move between aspect ratios with zero inconvenience.

A 4K Projector with an External Anamorphic Lens

Speaking of an anamorphic lens, what is it? And why do you need one to create a true 4K UltraWide cinema experience? First, “anamorphic” simply refers to the cinematic format technique of shooting a widescreen picture. An external anamorphic lens externally attaches to your 4K projector to stretch or compress an image so that it displays properly based on aspect ratio.