Media Room Setup

Home Theater Design Magazine

Other then the kitchen, the media room, aka home theater is probably the most loved room in the house - if you have one. What is a media room? It's usually the room where you can find the lung popping base from the surround sound system, a huge TV screen, an awesome stereo, from soup to nuts playstation or Wii setup and such as in my case, a few pieces of exercise equipment tucked away in a dark corner which has nothing to do with media but is really nice to hear your favorite tunes in surround when you're “working out”!

This is the room where you can have some decorating fun. It's usually painted in a dark color to give it that “I feel like I'm in a real movie theater” feeling.

Avon Green - Benjamin Moore

Red Rock Terra Cotta - Sherwin Williams

Arresting Auburn - Sherwin Williams

Your window treatment choices are very important in this type of room. Here you need a functional verses a decorative choice. Instead of having a 2" dark wood blind, although it would look nice, you'll need a treatment that will absorb the sound and bounce it back into the room. I would recommend a cellular shade for an under treatment. The “Northern Lights 3/8" double cell” by Bali would be perfect. It's a thick shade and will not allow any light to come into the room which may reflect off your TV screen. You can always add over treatments to dress up the window. You can use any drapery panels of your choice or if you want to keep in with the movie theater theme, use velvet drapery. I had a media room when I lived in Pittsburgh and although I didn't have cellular shades underneath, I did have dark blue velvet drapery panels on the windows. You can hear the difference from the velvet alone. It's sounded very cave like, not echoey and it made for an awesome sounding room!