This is one of our favourite projects: a home cinema installation in Berkshire, designed and built by our own team. The owners of this Finchampstead home wanted a high end cinema room with sound and picture to match, so we took the room back to a shell and built it up again. Here is the story from start to finish.
Taking the room back to a shell
The room started with black walls, film themed wallpaper and a blackout blind at the window. We took the old ceiling down and cleared the space, then built a stud wall for soundproofing and lowered the ceiling to improve the acoustics.
A staged floor for two rows of seats
Next came the staged floor: a timber frame that lifts the back row, so everyone has a clear view of the screen. The cabling went in at the same time, while the floor, walls and ceiling were still open.
The window that became a shelf unit
A cinema room does not want daylight, so the window had to go. Rather than leave a blank wall, we blocked it up and built a custom shelf unit into the new stud wall in its place, with LED lighting on every shelf. It is one of the details we are most pleased with.
Hidden speakers and fabric walls
The walls are wrapped in fabric, with Sonance speakers hidden behind them. An Anthem MRX 11 AV receiver and power amplifier drive the sound, and the video is distributed over CAT6 using AVPro Edge MXNet.
Lighting in the walls, floor and ceiling
Colour changing LED lighting runs in lines down the walls, around the ceiling and along the edge of each step. In the photos you can see it on test in red, and again in blue once the carpet and the first seats were in.
Seats, screen and simple control
With the carpet down, nine reclining seats went in across the two levels, facing a projector screen that fills the end wall. The projector sits in its own housing at the back of the room. The whole cinema is controlled with Crestron, which keeps it simple to use, and our engineers calibrated the picture and sound before we handed the room over.
The cinema was completed in March 2024. The work ran to about a month of planning and design, two months of structural work and soundproofing, a month of AV installation and fabric wrapping, and two weeks of lighting, carpet and final commissioning.
The build in photos
You can read the full case study on our Finchampstead home cinema project page, see more finished rooms in our Gallery, or find out more about our home cinema design and installation service.
Planning a home cinema installation in Berkshire?
Whatever your room looks like today, we would love to hear about it. Tell us about your project or call us on 01344 937999.
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