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Insights from a Professional Home Theater Installer 

A theater isn’t just a room with large speakers and a projector. A theater is an immersive getaway, a space that’s precisely designed to deliver you to new worlds. And this applies to home theaters just as much as commercial cinemas. Even at home, your custom home theater should transport you into stories unfolding before you. 

However, building a professional-looking home theater requires time and experience. It’s not as simple as plugging in a TV. This installation project starts from the ground up, and you’ll need to consider how the environment influences the experience. 

As a home theater installer in Fort Myers, FL, and cities nationwide, we’ve accrued many installation tips over the years. Here are key components to a custom home theater that will bring your family together and inspire lasting memories. 

SEE ALSO: 4 Steps to Avoid Hating the Color in Your Home Theater 

Neat and Tidy: Hidden Wiring and Hardware 

To create a polished aesthetic in the home theater, we recommend discreetly installing power and data wiring within the room’s walls. This way, you won’t have a tangle of wires hanging down to the speakers or projector. 

Concealed speakers can be embedded within the walls and ceilings, offering a streamlined, upscale appearance. And when not in use, retractable TVs, projector screens, and projectors can be cleverly camouflaged within the ceiling. 

Crystal-Clear Audio: Surround Sound  

Is a home theater really a home theater without surround sound? We’d say no. To ensure you hear dialogue, sound effects, and the score evenly, you need high-quality speakers that distribute sound around you. 

So how many speakers do you need? A traditional surround sound system includes five speakers: a center speaker, front left and right, left and right at ear level, and a subwoofer. You can expand with more rear speakers and upward-firing Dolby Atmos speakers. 

Maybe you’ve heard of Dolby Atmos. It’s an audio technology that creates a "3D surround sound" effect that allows sounds to move freely across the room, moving from channel to channel. To fully enjoy Dolby Atmos, you'll need at least two Dolby Atmos speakers and a Dolby Atmos-enabled receiver.

Balance the Sound: Acoustic Treatments 

If you’re investing in high-fidelity speakers, it would be a shame to play them in a room with poor acoustics. Most rooms experience reflections and reverberations off walls, floors, and furniture, which distorts sound. Absorptive acoustic panels on walls and ceilings will help balance the audio in your home theater, creating a professional sound. Plus, panels can be customized to suit your theater’s aesthetic and décor. 

Lights, Camera, Action: Lighting Design 

If you want your space to feel like a real theater, any old lampshade won’t do. For theater-level sophistication, we recommend investing in a professional lighting design. At BRAVAS, we take care to install dimmable recessed LEDs, linear lights, wall sconces, and under-seat lights with customizable brightness and color settings. We can integrate lights into a smart control system, so you can use a single remote or wall keypad to control lighting, audio, video, and more. 

Your Home Theater Throne: Seating 

To make this really feel like a theater, invest in home theater seating! We partner with seating vendors that offer countless loungers, sectionals, and individual seats in personalized colors and fabrics. In larger home theaters, we can even install tiered flooring so everyone can see without obstruction. 

Start Your Home Theater Project Today 

If you’re ready to build the home theater of your dreams, BRAVAS is here to help. We design and install custom home theaters across the country, and no two are the same. Contact us here to get started today!