Copywriter: Ché Knight
Date: November 2009
The decision to incorporate a home theater or media room into your home is a total blast. Before committing to the project, it is important to budget in costs, have a plan for the layout and the material required, and start researching for your favorite movie collectables to incorporate into your home theater experience. Media rooms are a great way to gather family or friends and bond with one another, and let’s face it – they’re just really cool.
The BasicsObviously the electronics are the first consideration. Do you want a plasma or LCD TV, and how big should it be? Do you want to wire the room specifically for the surround speakers? What other electronics should the room contain? Do you want HD or Blu-Ray or both? Etc. Do your research, talk to the experts in the electronics store, and visit several stores to compare prices and advice before deciding. The typical media room has a large HD TV, some game consoles, an HD DVD player, a VCR player, and a Blu-Ray player. People generally like to have their room wired for surround sound – it looks cleaner than having wires run all over the place.
The Fun StuffOnce you have the essentials, it is time to decorate your media room. Decorating your media room is undoubtedly the best part, and by using high quality movie collectables it will look better than anything you have ever seen. The following are some collectables that will make your media room look like a Hollywood museum:
•
Posters – These are a staple of media rooms. You cannot have a media room without original movie posters! Place posters in high quality glass frames and put them on display. For an authentic theater feel, hang art lights above the poster.
•
Apparel – Although hard to come by, using movie replica apparel as part of your theme is unique and just insanely cool. Buy glass shadowboxes and hang a Terminator jacket, Gandalf sword, or 300 Spartan leather briefs inside the shadowbox. If you have a hallway leading to your media room, line the walls with alternating posters and movie apparel for a real movie feel.
•
Busts – A bust is a partial statue that depicts a person’s head and shoulders. Set up pedestals
around the perimeter of your room and place a bust atop each stand. Can you imagine
watching action flicks surrounded by Darth Vader, the Terminator, Voldemort, the Hulk, and your other favorite action heroes and villains? You can, and it will feel even cooler than you can imagine.
•
Figurines – Display lifelike figurines from your favorite movies. Whether you accompany your media players by placing movie figurines on the shelves or you install your own shelves for display, a media room is incomplete without some figurines.
•
Themed Bookends – Ok, so you probably won’t be doing a lot of reading in your media room, but you have to place your DVDs somewhere. Instead of using the bookends for books, place them at either end of each DVD row. There are many more props and movie memorabilia you can find from all your favorite films. Place them strategically around the room, accentuate them with art lighting, and you will have created an authentic theater in the privacy of your own home. It’s a good idea to put a couple bookshelves in your media room to display the additional collectables. Adding color by placing memorabilia from your favorite movies allows you to personalize your space and improves the overall experience.
About the Author:
William FitzPatrick consults people on building outstanding media rooms. After building his own home theater from the ground up and decorating it to look like a Hollywood museum using movie replicas and collectables, he realized how much the ambiance adds to the overall experience. He has been collecting
movie replicas,
replica weapons and
movie collectables ever since, and frequently advises others on creating the coolest and most mind-blowing home theaters.
