While home theaters are great places to have fun with room design, getting carried away with over-the-top colors can actually hurt the image being displayed on your TV or projector screen. If you paint your walls a bright red, for example, the picture will have a reddish cast because light from your projector or big-screen TV will reflect onto the sidewalls and bounce back onto the screen. For this reason, many high-end theaters are dressed in brown, grey, black, or other dark colors. These deeper hues absorb light, rather than reflect it back onto the screen.
Buy the Right Size Screen, Sit at the Appropriate Distance
While it is tempting to make the entire front wall of the theater one gigantic screen, that isn’t always the best option. It’s important to consider your viewing distance relative to screen size. If you sit too close to the screen or the screen is too large for the room, you will start to see the display’s pixel structure. If you sit too far away or the screen is too small for the room, you will lose that big-screen impact, which defeats the purpose of having a home theater in the first place.
Luckily, high-definition displays let you sit closer to the screen than ever before, which means you can put a larger screen in a smaller theater than with standard-definition displays. Of course, the debate rages on about the appropriate viewing distance. For instance, THX recommends that you divide your diagonal screen size by 0.84 for 1080p displays, while others recommend multiplying diagonal screen size by 1.5. For a 120-inch screen, these calculations produce a recommended viewing distance from 11 to 15 feet. How far you sit from the screen and how big a screen you purchase is ultimately up to you—as long as you are comfortable, don’t see pixels, and maintain the dramatic impact of the big screen, who’s counting?
TV Stand and Audio Cabinet by Sanus Systems
