My Home Theater Building Tips

I just love redesigning a room for home theaters!

I have built three home theaters over the years in three different homes and so here are some tips

Design and panels

• Draw out your design, even if not to scale.  Measure, write down your measurements on your drawings.  Where do you want the screen?  How big is the screen you want?  Draw out where you want panels to cover up things or curtains to hide or conceal or just for looks
• When buying material for panels make sure it's not a type that will shred easily.  Play with the edges and make sure that it doesn't just fall apart.  Also, do you have pets?  If you have pets, keep in mind that you should buy material that will not attract pet hair or you will have a constant mess to clean up when your pets rub up against panels
• It's okay to use a couple of different materials. I used two different types for my panels, one for the top and bottom and another for the two side panels.  They were both black but the contrast and change of the material looked nice.  Look for clearance materials at Joann's Fabrics, Beverly's Crafts, Walmart, etc.  My first home theater was on a serious budget and I bought some really thick, awesome material for the panels from Walmart, and that material is no better than what I paid full price for at Joann's.  If you've got the time to wait and look (and the patience) you can find great deals.
• The Home Depot aisle that contains all the brackets and deck parts is your friend!  I have used hardware such as bed side rail hardware, corner hardware for decks, etc to build my home theater panels and attach them to the walls and ceilings
• You can build panels for sound and looks or just for looks.  My rooms have always had nice padded carpeting or plush rugs so I've never felt I needed sound panels.  I build my panels for theaters to make the entire front of my theater look black and theater-like.  It's a better viewing experience and it looks really nice for little money.
• Build panels with the light bundles of 1"x1/2" wood sold at Home Depot.  It's cheap and light but strong enough to support having material stapled and pleated around it.

Screens

• Buy your screen online, ebay is an excellent source.  Read reviews for the seller.  Get a premium frame where the frame is covered in velvet or material to keep it from reflecting.
• Slightly grey or silver screens seem to give the best pictures (IMO)
• Electric screens are cool but keep in mind they can fail and you could end up with a broken screen that is stuck up or down, it's all personal preference though.  Fixed screens have no parts to fail and are perfectly flat.  Also, the less expensive electric screens are slow to lower and raise but they do work!  If you really want electric, go electric, I'm considering a future upgrade and redesign of this room to include an electric panel so we can use the fireplace but I really prefer the look of the fixed frame screens.
• Hang the screen first, it's easier to measure out the panel sizes once the screen is in it's place

Curtains

• I made my first curtains in my first home theater.  They weren't as nice as what I have and I spent almost $400 on material that wasn't really reusable given the way I designed it.  You can make your own or buy.  After experiencing both I recommend buying.
• Look on eBay   I still spent about $1000 on my theater curtains during my last project but I bought them at Linens and Things for about 1/3 of the cost during their clearance sales.  Luckily I bought a ton of curtains so I had them for my new project.  You can get a very similar style on ebay now at $22 per panel in black with a second layer of fabric for blacking out light built into the curtain.  They look nice and you just can't buy nice fabric for that low of a price.
• I've mounted curtains behind panels (valance) and where they show and they both look great.  Do what looks good to you, look at other people's photos of their theaters.

Mounts

• When buying a mount consider if you want your projector flush with the ceiling (or close) or if you need it to drop down a bit.  If your ceiling is high and you don't drop it down you could get the keystone effect.  I find even projectors that adjust for this still don't look as good as they do if you just buy the right mount and mount it properly.  My first two theaters required a drop down mount and my current one called for a flush mount.  
• Plug the projector in and hold it and get it on the wall displaying the approximate size you want it to display to get an idea of where to mount it.  Stand on a ladder with it while it's on and see if you have any keystone issues (this is where the picture is smaller at the bottom than at the top and so there is a distortion, it's not rectangle).  If there is then you will likely need to get a projector with a little drop from the ceiling.
• Ebay is a great place to shop for mounts but I would stay away from the homemade stuff people sell, stick to things that look manufactured professionally.  The lower the cost the cheaper it's made.  Don't cheap out on your mount or you will be futzing with it till the end of days.  Vibrations from people just walking upstairs gradually will move the projector if you have a cheap mount.  Keep in mind to replace the lamps you need to remove the projector and if your mount is badly designed this could be a frustrating experience.

Cabling

• Whenever possible run your cables through the walls and ceiling.  If you run cables from your entertainment console area and the projector I suggest running a couple extra pull strings through with the bunch of cables so that if you ever need to pull a new cable type (such as HDMI the supports 3D) then you have a string in there to pull through another wire.  
• If you can't hide them in the walls then hide cables under carpet, rugs, furniture, etc.  I really like the cable track you can buy at home depot as it blends into white trim, etc.  I used this a lot while in an apartment.  A really big area rug for a home theater warms it up and can easily be used to hide speaker wires, etc.  
• Look on eBay for good deals on cables but don't buy the cheapest thing you can find.  Buy shielded cables when possible and it's good to look for cables with quality connectors.  HDMI and other expensive cables can be purchased for a fraction of the cost on eBay.  They sometimes ship these direct from China so they can take a couple of weeks to get them but in my experience it's worth the savings if you've got the time.  The really long cables are much, much cheaper here than you will find in any store, just don't go with the absolute cheapest and read those seller reviews!

Walls, Paint, Carpet, etc

• Use black and matte black around the screen as much as possible.  Lighter colors reflect the light from the screen and light up the room which makes for a less enjoyable viewing experience.  Some people have even painted the ceiling or mounted a black panel on the ceiling to reduce the light. 
• Medium to dark colored paints on the walls and floors works best.  
• If you can't or don't want to paint your room in a darker color just try to black out the wall around it with black panels

Well that's it for now.  I will post more on the theater project as it changes and develops.  I hope to take some detailed photos soon...  stay tuned.