This Contemporary Style Home Theater is in the basement of a home in Long Island, New York.
The client had a dream of one day having a great Home Theater and when he bought a home in Muttontown, Glen Cove, New York, his large basement was the perfect place for the theater of his dreams.
The previous owner had a Owens Corning Basement Finishing System, with a very primitive home theater setup, but this was not the home theater that the new owner had dreamed of.
We discussed many options to salvage the existing room to help give the look of a great theater, but in the end, knowing that we have the ability and resources to be a one stop solution, the client opted to have us completely demo the existing room and rebuild the theater completely.
This was a good decision since we were able to straighten out all the walls, re-work the HVAC to eliminate some undesireable protrusions from the ceiling, and gave us the ability to use Quiet Rock soundproof drywall and move the entrance from the side of the theater to the rear of the theater. This decision opened up a lot of design, layout and acoustical possibilities that were limited by trying to work with the existing room and all its little nuances.
By changing the framing and using our room modeling acoustical prediction software, we were also able to make the finished dimensions what we needed to optimize the bass response of the theater to predict and avoid unwanted room mode standing waves.
The design process started with several consultation visits and spacial layouts.
The final decision was to make 6 Elite Home Theater Motorized Seats
fit comfortably centered in the room, with an aisle down each side.
Because of the low ceiling (7'-4") and beneficial width of the theater, the choice was to change from a 16x9 aspect ratio screen to a 2:35:1 aspect ratio. This allowed us to still have a very large screen (49" tall x 115" wide) and use 2 rows of seats stadium style, without the heads of people in the front row cutting off the view of people in the rear row. Even at this extreme, we still needed to engineer a 14" tall seating platform to maintain a good line of sight.
The platform construction doubles as a natural bass trap by incorporating tuned isolators under the framing members. This increases the effect of the bass for the people in the rear row and removed underireable "boominess" from the theater, creating a smoother bass response.
The client knew he wanted a red theater, and one of the red velvet acoustical fabric samples we provided just jumped out. He said that was it. He wanted that fabric. It was luxurious, presigious and was the exact color he wanted.
From there we had the base for our color pallete. We provided multiple wood finish sample choices for final selection for the wood columns, multi stage crown molding, baseboard, casing, custom wood door header and movie poster frames.
To add more interest, we substituted conventional sconces for a custom lighting effect in the columns, using colored plexiglass inserts with LED "Neon" Lighting behind. This created a yellow glow that has an unrivaled impact on the look and feel of the design.
We modified the existing black drop ceiling system by adding fiberoptics to simulate the effect of a night sky. Another huge impact and we patterned 3 of the panels with constellations of the astrologigal signs of the 2 owners and the baby on the way.
A motorized curtain rod, red velvet fabric with gold fringe opens and closes to create the feel of an elegant, comfortable space and hide the screen until showtime.
One of the more elegant pieces of furniture in the clients home was a heavily upholsterd, deep button tufted, pleated velvet sofa in the formal living room. We decided to make the theater side door panel incorporating the luxury and richness of that same technique using our red velvet acoustical fabric.
The lobby side of the door was made with a shallow pillowed upholstery technique using brass buttons and black faux leather (to eliminate the need for seams).
The side and rear speakers are discretely hidded behind acoustically transparent material. The client purchased 4 of his favorite movie posters and we had the posters scanned and digitally re-printed on this speaker grill type material, so it looks like the room is accented with 4 movie posters, when in reality, they are speaker grills. Also behind that material are 4 specially engineered diffusers to randomly scatter the sound waves to create an optimum acoustical surround field.
The fabric covered wall panels are combinations of absorptive, diffusive and reflective materials. While the acoustical panels are not visible behind the fabric, it is a critical engineering component to make the room sound like a great perfoming movie theater. This is one aspect that is routinely overlooked by other people and companies that create the look of a nice theater, but the client misses out on the performance of the use of multiple types of absorptive, diffusive and reflective materials properly placed to optimize the acoustical environment.
In some cases clients with high end home theaters have hired us to evaluate their theater and take out all their existing acoustics and redo the theater, because it did not sound good, even with the most expensive equipment.
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