So you’re looking for ideas for your basement theater and coming up empty. All the basement design pictures and tips are already a few steps ahead of you, and you want more control over building your basement. You also want to know about the basic concepts of basement theaters before starting. If that’s you, look no further: this should help clear up the initial steps before designing a basement theater.
How much room do you have for your basement theater?
The first question is size. Take into consideration how large the room is, and where the screen should be located. Determine where the projector will be, which will let you know what size the actual screen will be (mark the corners of the screen for reference later). If the room, or planned room, in your future basement theater is rectangular, you want to aim for fewer, longer rows. But keep in mind the size of the screen relative to the corners.
“Serious” Home Theater vs. Family Friendly
Next, you need to choose your atmosphere. Typically this means determining whether you want more of a casual “family room” or a serious home theater. The family room would have more flexibility in its use, and could serve more functions than watching movies, such as multiple video game systems, or locations for more comfortable reclining. The more serious home theater, however, would primarily serve as a location for watching movies, and would be designed to look like an actual movie theater.
Building the Dream Basement Theater
And finally, you need to decide whether you want to hire professionals to be involved with the construction of your basement theater. In theory, if you have a lot of experience in construction, wiring, and sound, you should be able to carry out the basement theater with a decent amount of planning and execution. However, if you don’t have the experience and also don’t want to use the cheaper surround sound systems at your local electronics store, you want to consider hiring basement finishing professionals, who can take your newly ironed out plan and make it happen at the greatest level of quality.
