Click here to see photos of this basement home theater

The good news: These homeowners wanted to use their spacious basement for a dedicated home theater to seat eight. The bad news: A load-bearing wall in the middle of the basement reduced the usable space to about 12 feet wide. It was 40 feet long, but as custom electronics contractor Scott Varn of Harmony Interiors in Asheville, NC, says: "I told them they might want to consider putting in a bowling alley instead."

To fit eight seats in two rows, the first thing Harmony Interiors did was eliminate the armrests between the chairs. Then Varn and company had to tackle the projector problem. A DLP (digital light processing) projector was to hang from the ceiling, but the ceiling was less than eight feet high and the homeowners wanted the second row of seats to be raised above the first. That precluded placing the projector above the second row. Varn wanted to hang it above the front-row seats, but then the projector would be too close to the screen, actually casting a larger image than the screen they had selected for the space.

It was a difficult problem, until Harmony and the homeowners decided to move the front row back and enlarge the screen. The left and right front speakers originally intended to flank the screen would have to be placed behind an acoustically perforated screen so they could fire sound through it. Moving the front row back also made it possible to use more of an alcove for cabinets and bookshelves along one side.

Once the location of the projector was determined, it was time to design an enclosure for it, because Harmony did not want it hanging conspicuously from a low ceiling. "First we designed the box barely bigger than the projector, but it looked horrible, so we spread it out horizontally, and that looks more attractive," Varn says. The stepped design appears as a decorative element on the ceiling. Then it was faux-painted with a coppery hue.

The ceiling itself presented a potential design clash. The homeowners wanted their faux painter to paint clouds on the ceiling, but Varn thought that would just bring more attention to the low structure. The compromise? Paint it blue, but with no clouds. The blue ceiling actually helps conceal the Triad in- ceiling surround speakers, whose grilles are also painted blue. The uniformly dark ceiling also gives the illusion of greater depth overhead. A cloud scene was painted in archways in the bar area in the back instead.

The problems of the narrow room width and low ceiling were conquered, but what about the sound in this narrow space? "It was an acoustic nightmare," Varn says. "We put extra-thick padding when it's on a concrete slab like it is here, that makes a difference." Absorptive panels were also placed near the front of the theater at the sides, with one panel concealing the equipment rack.

"This was more of a design that won't compromise the look and the image on the screen. It was also very collaborative on the part of the faux painter. The homeowners had a lot of design input. We had a lot of conversations about the look and feel of the theater," Varn says. "It shows that if you want to get what you want out of a theater, you really have to be involved in the planning process."

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Equipment List

Legacy Harmony speakers (3)
Triad InCeiling Gold/6 Omni surround speakers (4)
Triad InWall Silver/15 powered subwoofer
DWIN TransVision3 DLP projector
Draper 119-inch Onyx projection screen
Denon AVR-3805 receiver
Escient DVDM-100 DVD management system
Escient FireBall E-40 music server
Sony DVP-CX777ES 400-disc DVD/CD changer

Systems Design
Harmony Interiors
Asheville, NC
www.harmonyinteriors.com

Custom Carpentry: David Woodworth
Mural: Jane Hurrell-Rushworth
Faux Painting: Robyn Gonzales

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