Our seven top tips

1. Choose your equipment carefully – It may sound like a no-brainer, but top-quality equipment is a decisive factor when building a jaw-dropping, mind-blowing home theatre system. The options are dizzying – do you choose a screen or projector? What’s the ideal viewing area? How many channels of surround sound should you have? Luckily, any hi-fi expert worth their salt will be able to help you precisely tailor the system to your room. The cinematic world’s your oyster!

2. Exclude ambient light – All that ambient light seeping into your home theatre room destroys image brightness and contrast, seriously degrading your viewing experience. Light can seep in through cracks under doors and windows, reducing screen contrast. (That’s why movie theatres are always so dark.) To remedy this, exclude virtually all light from the room by covering windows with solid blinds and using draught excluders to fill gaps in doors. The difference will jump out at you! 

3. Sound stage – Ambient noise, even if it’s not particularly loud, will reduce your system’s immersive power. Carefully choose your theatre’s location within your house if you’re seeking genuine theatre-quality ambience. If you’re near a high-traffic space such as a kitchen, ensure there’s significant sound insulation between you.       

4. Create absorbent surfaces – One of the most common causes of poor-quality sound is the acoustic properties of your room’s interior. Sound bouncing off hard surfaces will muddy your system’s sound – so the more absorbent surfaces your room has, the more complete your home theatre experience will be. For optimal sound absorbance, use acoustic panels and blinds throughout.     

5. Speaker placement – It’s easy to overshadow your speakers’ capacities with poor placement. Get help during installation to make sure they’re spaced at the perfect distance apart, and perform a detailed calibration to achieve maximum sound separation between channels. Once that’s done, you’ll hear every F-14 flying straight over your head in Top Gun.    

6. Cinema appearance – A transformative home theatre has to look like a cinema! The sky’s the limit here – for example, installing raked seating with a centre aisle could help you accurately capture that cinema feel. Flat, dark paint finishes will really help with the ‘theatre look’.   

7. Create a seating plan – If you’re having a group of people over to watch a movie, make sure they’re perfectly positioned for viewing. Carefully considering each person’s sightline when choosing your seating arrangement will ensure each viewer enjoys an optimal viewing experience.

At Englehart, we’ll do everything we can to make sure your home theatre system gets the dedicated space it deserves.