Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Lets plan a theater space

So, the moving truck came and went today and were almost moved across country. Our new place has a completely unfinished basement that I have already made rough plans for. They are not exact dimensions but a good scale based on the dimensions from our homes main floor dimensions. The space is roughly 15'6" x23'.

There will be a 112" screen about 14' from the viewing locations. The AT screen wall is 4' into the room.

If anyone has any feedback on how the space sould be lit, or a better idea for an A/V rack workaround I'd be greatful. So far I am thinking a soffit with rope accent with sconces at the midpoint of the top of each acoustic panel. The panel config and types are still tbd.

There will be cabinets on the backside of the left wall that will act as a cheater av cupboard, beer fridge, blankets etc.

Anyway. PIC TIME

Nice looking dedicated Home Theater space i'm envious. May I ask slightly off topic what equipment your gonna be using in that gem? Or link me to another post if you've already talked about this...

Beautiful drawings, beautiful space. Wishing you many happy hours there with your loved ones.

Thanks for the encouragement guys!

Admittedly, I am going a little OCD with the planning. I went through so many iterations in my last space that I lost track. Learned a lot from it and now I'm ready to create a proper space for the fam that looks a little less mad scientist......


Lighting ideas?

Hey, what's wrong with mad scientist?

I know many people have gone with the less expensive pot lights, but we opted for on wall sconces in our room. We had a difficult spot for lighting on an angled wall but a friend who was a lighting wholesalesman found us something that worked perfect.
All are dimmable of course.

See old photos here:

Holy blanks batman!

Must be prewire central there.

Your lights are great, i like how you mixed spots with diffuse lighting in the same space. Those spots would look great if i wanted to light the media stand at the rear of the room.

Noted!

On a frustrating note, our sectional was delivered yesterday and wouldn't go down the stairs..... We bought it pre constuction to take advantage of a great sale. Looking for seating now too..... That can come later though.

The room was setup to deliver 7.x surround sound in two directions so yes, some pre-wiring indeed. I never did add in an ethernet line though as i figured wireless options would become available by the time i cared much about providing a net based application in the room.

We still have yet to add the other 2 rear surrounds. I partly stopped b/c i had contemplated adding surrounds in the newer wood veneers but then if i did that, it would start a cascade effect for having to replace the rest of the Axiom system with the same wood veneers.
That and the fact i have an older AVR which only does 6.1 at the moment.

The room is slated for some updating but not until we finish reno in the kitchen and focus on a newer family vehicle.

The on wall sconces are really nice, but I was one of the many that just opted for the cheaper pot lights. With drop ceiling they are super easy to wire and mount too.

One of these days I will sit down when I have some time and write a nice long reply. For lights, I went with small can lights around the soffit (you could do the same along the edge of the ceiling, or even go with ones spread throughout the room). We then added 3 wall sconces (don't get those cheapo "paintable" kind. Spend $10+ more and get something with some metal, or glass, or both.

Biggest thing is getting them on dimmers... Notice, that is plural. Set up at LEAST 2 zones in the theater. In my V3.0, we had can lights throughout the room, but the half closest to the screen was on a different dimmer than the back half where we sat. Then we could eat dinner and see what we were eating, and not have lights on right above the screen (even if they were only at 25% thanks to the dimmer).

In my current space, since the wall sconces are in the back half of the theater, but the small can lights go all along the side and back walls (in the soffits), they are on their own dimmer. Then, if we are eating in the theater, I turn the can lights all the way off, and the wall sconces to about 25% and it works perfect.

Get remote controlled dimmers too. I went with two Lutron IR dimmers. Press the paddle up once and it goes to whatever pre-set lighting level you want, press it twice and it is on at 100%, press it up a third time and it is back to the pre-set dimmer level, press it down and it is off (all with a nice slow fade). On my remote I have 1 preset for eating (it is the default preset on the dimmers themselves. One I set to the sconces slightly on, and on the other dimmer it is at like 1% (as close to off as possible). Then the remote just sends the signal to put both dimmers to their preset, and it is perfect for eating. I have another preset on my remote that goes to the "eating" level, and then does a +2 on both, this is more for having a dim space, but not fully dark for when waiting for the wife and kids to come into the room.

Works great, and allows to good lighting control.

Oh, and we don't eat dinner down there THAT much, but we do use the presets a lot.

EDIT: Put at least 1 CAT6 cable drop into the room. There are some devices that can connect to the internet wirelessly, but if you want to stream video either from the internet or from a media server/computer in the house, you will want/need a wired connection. I know, you may not have plans for that now, but I didn't plan on having a HTPC in my room either when I dropped the CAT6 cables in. One all the way back to my internet connection point in my house. This was just for being able to do firmware updates originally for all of my equipment. I am glad I did, otherwise I would have had a really hard time adding it later so that I can stream my 72GB Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings, or the even larger sequels. Even smaller file size movies would choke at even high quality across wireless, and I ended up wanting exact same playback (or better) with my HTPC, so that means no compression at all.

monoprice.com will hook you up with cheap network cable. Buy longer than you need...