Things to Consider When Building a Dedicated Media Room

A media room has different meanings to different people. A media room can be a family room, where everyone gathers to watch TV. A media room can be a separate room in the house with a projection screen or dedicated TV, a media room can be whatever you want it to be, you can create the type of media room that best suites your family with careful planning. But, the one thing, all homeowners agree on, a media room is essential to their home!

We were no different, we have always had media rooms in our homes. We have had both types, a dedicated movie theater and a media room with a dedicated large screen TV.  In our first house, we created a dedicated theater with a projector and a 110″ screen.

When we built the home, we added the step up platform, critical for a real theater and a second row of reclining chairs. We added two cubbies in the front of the room to house the components and DVD’s. We added three speakers in the front of the room,  one on each side and two on the back wall.

When we moved into our second home, there was a room in the basement that was having an identity crisis. We think it was intended to be a media room at some point, but never made it to fruition.

Take a look at what I mean. This is the front of the room with speaker screens already installed, but there weren’t any speakers attached to the screens….wait it gets worse.

The entrance to the room is on the right side, which makes for a strange configuration and the drop down ceiling is another challenge in this room.

But get this…there is another door in the back of the room that leads to an additional room…that’s right, you have to go thru the media room to get to this other room.

This adjoining room really creeped me out. It reminded me of a room from “Silence of the Lambs”.

Are you ready to see this room…proceed with caution!!!!

What the???? I had no words when I saw this room!

Alright to tell you the truth,  I had a lot of words, but I won’t repeat them.

We believe the prior owner had tried to turn this room into a cigar room, it smelled like nicotine and had an overhead fan installed. This room was a bad DIY project, complete with stained paneling.

What to do with these rooms, and this configuration? How do we turn these rooms into a functional media room and best utilize the spaces.

We came up with a few ideas.

Option A -Remove the wall between the 2 rooms, and have a really long theater? Didn’t like that idea, it would make the room approximately 15′ x 33′ long.

Option B -Turn the adjoining room into a wine cellar or bedroom? Didn’t like that idea either, doesn’t seem feasible to have to walk through one room to get to another room.

Option C  -Install a hallway between the rooms, so each room has it’s own entrance. Ding Ding Ding! Option C was the winner!

Here is a visual of the rooms before and after.

Even though we had to shrink the size of the media room when we added the hallway, it made the most sense to have 2 separate rooms. We relocated the double doors to the back of the room and installed the TV where the doors used to be located.

As you can see, the drop down ceiling was a problem. If we had installed the TV on the front wall, the drop down ceiling would have been distracting while watching a movie. Visually, installing the TV on the side with the drop down made the most sense. We also installed new carpeting in the room.

As for the component rack, it houses all the equipment for the fully automated media room, including 3 tuners, 4K DVD player, FIOS boxes, Apple TV’s, SONOS brain, 4K media player and the Control 4 brain. Control 4 is a home automation system that can turn any room or your entire house into a SMART home.

You can see the new hallway that separates the 2 rooms in the picture below.

But what really makes the room a true media room, is the 80″ Sony Ultra 4k TV we installed with speakers. This TV is truly exceptional in every way. *This post contains affiliate links*

We purchased an 80″ but Sony has since, made an 85″ Ultra 4K TV with all the bells and whistles (Click on Image)!

This 85″ LED SMART TV has 4 HDMI inputs, and includes a voice remote control (which is very cool). Check it out, this TV will not let you down, the picture quality is amazing and so life like!

On a side note, we do not recommend buying the SHARP 90″ 1080P TV. We owned 2 of them, and they both died on us in a relatively short amount of time.

For seating, we chose 4 reclining chairs, similar to these (Click on Image).

As for the creepy adjoining room? We ripped down the paneling, installed all new drywall and travertine natural stone flooring.  This room can now be used as an extra bedroom or future wine cellar.

This project was a lot of work and frustration but in the end we got what we wanted, an all around superb media room that can be used for gaming, movies, TV, and most important family time!

Have you taken on any media room renovations?