7 Hacks For A Flawless Home Cinema Setup — MELANIE LISSACK INTERIORS

Setting up a home cinema can be immensely fun. From cosying up indoors projecting movies on a pull-down screen to a DIY outdoor cinema glamping experience, a home cinema night is a great way to bring family and friends together.

If you are interested in constructing one in your garden, living room, bedroom, attic, garage or basement, here are some hacks and ideas for a flawless cinema setup.

Invest In A Projector + a Bedsheet

First and foremost, you’ll want to invest in a projector. While conventional TV screens are getting bigger and better, a projector gives you the flexibility to beam your favourite films and TV shows on ceilings and projector screens - even bedsheets! A good quality movie projector just needs something that can diffuse the light for a clear and crisp image, so a large white bedsheet is a budget-friendly and simple solution that can be used both in the garden and indoors.

DIY outdoor cinema — *Image credit: Garden Trading*

Add Comfortable Seating

With films often lasting two hours or more, it’s important that you and your guests are comfortable for the duration of the movie. If you are building a home cinema room, consider adding seating with recline features and adjustable headrests. For less permanent home cinema set-ups, look into bean bags with back support.

Add LED Strip lighting or light projectors

If you want to go the extra mile and complete the full cinema experience, installing colourful LED light strips around the room or a plug in a light projector is a relatively inexpensive and simple way to increase the authentic sensory aspect of your home cinema. Many of the LED strip lights available have built-in responsive microphones to make the lights pulsate and change colour in sync with sounds and music coming from the movie.

*LED sound reactive light bar* *by MenKind.*

Optimise The Screen Size

Working with experts like Clarke Infinity can help you optimise the screen or image size for your space. Making it too big can create awkward visuals that don’t quite seem right, while having it too small generates problems of its own. You want the projection to fill most of your field of view, but you don’t want it to start encroaching onto the surrounding walls. If it does, you’ll need to play around with the projector’s settings until it fits just right into your chosen space.

Enable Movie Mode

For that all-important cinema atmosphere you’ll want to enable ‘movie mode’ on your projector. Adding this setting can make it feel more like a cinema environment with flickering, a slower frame rate and images that work best in complete darkness.

Wire Up Room-Shaking Bass

Another strategy is to wire up some room-shaking bass to your existing AV equipment. A 200W subwoofer should do the trick. Making the sound better can have a profound effect, immersing you more in the on-screen action.

©*Lights4fun* *Ltd. Image Shot by Oliver Perrott.*

Get cosy with blankets, throws and atmospheric lighting

The great thing about a home cinema is that you have all the comfort of your home as well as the impact of a movie on the big screen. Layer up your seating area with throws and blankets to wrap yourself up in and dot around atmospheric candles, lanterns and fairy lights for an inviting, twinkly glow.