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Home theater design is all about adapting your room to enhance your new speakers, projector, and screen. Every aspect of the space can be adjusted to give you the best audio and video quality possible. For the latter, much of the focus is on creating the right lighting environment. Through blackout shades, stylistic adjustments, and smart control, we help you design a movie-watching experience in your Wilmette, IL home that mimics the one in a commercial theater.

SEE MORE: 4 Steps to Designing the Ultimate Home Theater System

Eliminate Ambient Lighting

A big part of your home theater design is making the room as dark as possible. We recommend installing your system in a room with no windows, but if that's not feasible you can install blackout shades to reduce light coming in from the outside. You can also modify your décor to keep light from bouncing around the room. Use darker colors for your walls, ceilings, and carpeting and avoid using decorations that include glass enclosures.

Centralize Control of Lights

Home theater design is all about creating the perfect environment for the images and sounds from your favorite movies to flourish. Every little corner of the room is taken into account to make sure your speakers, screens, and projector are given the necessary space to shine. When we're brought in on retrofit jobs to fix old DIY home theaters, we often come upon the same design mistakes that can result in blurred images, muffled sound and an uncomfortable viewing experience. Below we go over some of these common challenges and how we can help you overcome them.

SEE MORE: 4 Steps to Designing the Ultimate Home Theater System

1. Uncomfortable Seating Arrangements

As you begin work on your home theater system, you need to figure out how you want to use it. Will it be primarily used by the family? Then a communal couch where everyone can huddle together under a blanket may be the best option. If you’re going to use it with friends, it may be more comfortable if everyone has their own leather recliner. If you don’t consider this from the start, you may end up with an awkward arrangement that ruins the viewing experience.

2. Fitting All the Necessary Speakers