Sarah Metlova
Home Theater Decorating Ideas On A Budget – Although we are in the middle of renovating, we had the opposite idea that maybe we should start in another room. And while I wouldn’t recommend working in two rooms at once, it looks like we nailed it! We just finished a media room makeover full of affordable ideas for a quick but effective fix!
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Home Theater Decorating Ideas On A Budget
We are very lucky that this house had a home theater room when we bought it. This is a common thing to find in houses built in my town from the 1990s to today. Having a cinema experience at home seems to be what most people are looking for here!
Cheap Home Theater Room Ideas Movie
The home media room is in a separate room from our other basement and has no windows, but is open to most of our basement through an archway with many large windows. Drop down allows you to arrange the seats facing each other.
The existing movie screen had an MDF frame around it, which was actually quite nice. The problem was that the screen itself was at the front of the home and was built with a 4:3 ratio (width to height, almost square). If you were around in 1997, you may remember that this used to be the stand of our TVs. Over the years, our TVs have evolved to a 16:9 (width:height) ratio to better match the screen size used for movies.
The theater hall before the reconstruction. We haven’t used it yet and there are many more items piled up!
Because of this, in order to watch modern shows and movies on our screens, we had to watch them with an aspect ratio of 4:3, which means that movies and TV shows shot in 16:9 (well – all of them!) are distorted. It’s been a long time. Therefore, we rarely use this bonus room.
Home Theater Acoustics & Design Services
It seemed a shame to dedicate an entire room to a movie night and not use it! We finally bit the bullet and bought a new big screen with an aspect ratio of 16:9. We knew that the bezel around the screen would have to come down to accommodate the size of the screen, so we would have to paint over any dirt on the back of the screen before opening the screen.
You can tell by looking at this room that color will make a big impact here! The walls were covered with a 1990s light faux veneer, matching the house painted by Debbie Travis, 1994. This room was very old and needed updating!
I wanted to keep this new budget because, frankly, the bathroom is eating up all our extra money right now! But whatever we do in this space is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and while I may come back to this room at some point and add to it, I don’t want to redo anything. I see!
Looking at Instagram, Pinterest, design magazines, and all my usual go-to places for media room ideas made me feel a little godless. It is mainly composed of a modern media room with theater seats made up of rows of leather seats. Actually, when we bought the house, the owner wanted to put his existing leather theater chairs in the house, but that’s not really our personal style. There was a severe lack of traditional theater spaces from which to draw inspiration.
Modern Home Theater Design Ideas
I had to look it up somehow. I found some fun media rooms on Pinterest, but other than that, I decided to design this media space! I didn’t even create a mood board this time (who am I anyway?), but I thought a lot about what we needed for the movie room and put it forward:
We didn’t need to buy any new equipment to set up our home theater without a screen. The average cost of these items can range from basic to thousands and thousands.
If you’re looking to create a theater room in your home, I won’t cover things like surround speakers or projector screens versus smart TVs or other tech. I think you are here for the design factor!
I made a few small changes to this space to make our theater room work better for our family and feel more comfortable overall. Let’s get down to what we did and hopefully give you some home theater ideas for your home!
I Was Told This Doesn’t Qualify As A Home Theater Because It Includes A Soundbar…
After replacing the screen, we repaired the walls and then everything was painted. We chose a Valspar cobalt ball for this color change. In a dark room (especially a cinema) dark colors are a good choice. If you have a gaming device, brightly colored rooms can reflect light on the screen. So if you want to tap into your dark side, the media room is the best place to try it!
Painting is an easy way to transform a space and the first thing I recommend to anyone working on a budget. The room doesn’t look the same!
I experimented with 6 blue/green/grey colors and ended up with the color on the bottom left, Canon Cobalt. The walls had a 90s style finish!
I decided to go out and paint the ceiling and floorboards. I think the tonal baseboards would work with the walls or I could paint them black to match the cabinets. The thing that didn’t work was to leave them white!!
Carpeted Home Theater Ideas You’ll Love
We really needed to block the sun coming in from the next room. One day I’d like to add a door to replace the current arched opening (but that’s not in the immediate or affordable category!)
The old owner had curtains over this opening that were very short and thin so they didn’t close completely. I got new blackout curtains on Amazon. They were actually inspired by the color scheme as they had beautiful blue and pink flowers and a black background. Since I still had black cabinets, I thought they would match well.
These floral velvet curtains really set the color scheme of the room and let in the light we need.
I bought 4 panels (2 in a package) and sewed them together to make two wide panels and hem them. Or rather, I invited my mother to help me with it.
Surprising Ways You Can Design Your Own Personal Home Theater On A Very Tight Budget
I hung the curtains on a curtain track to make sure they were easy to open and close because we do that a lot! If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love a good drape when you really want to be able to control it easily! I also used them on the shower curtains in my two bathrooms! Come to think of it, maybe I should have painted the path to help cover it, so I’ll make some kind of curtain when I revisit this room to hide it better.
Most home theater designs include sections of theater seating that face each other, but that’s not our style, and it wasn’t in our budget to replace all the furniture. When we entered, we ended up with two identical sofas. Our old living room here, one on each floor.
It was good news that we had two sofas that were identical and fit perfectly. The couches we bought years ago at Wayfair are still our most comfortable couches! They are incredibly tall and shaped like an old English rolling arm. So putting one on each floor was pointless.
If you want to create a theater room with facing seats, creating step back seats is not really difficult. Framing the step (ours is about 8′ tall) and covering it with some flooring or carpet to add extra height to the back row makes a big difference in your look!
Rebuilding Theater Room
There were 4 candlesticks on the walls, made of brightly colored and painted ribbed glass. Although they were odd, they stood up well and I liked the stained glass, so I took them down and painted the stained part.
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