Home Theater Lighting Overview
Your home theater lighting plan is one of the more important aspects of your overall plan for your home theater design. Careful planning is crucial if you want to
achieve the desired effects with consideration to how you intend to use your media room.
Make sure you devote plenty of time during the planning stages of the process to map out not only the location of your home theater lighting, but what purpose the lighting will
serve and how the lighting will be controlled. Ultimately, this can have downstream effects on what type of lighting you select to fill those needs, which will also
impact your budget for your home theater project.
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In this article, we’ll simply explore various concepts, practices, and ideas to help foster that process as you work through this stage in your home theater design
planning process. While much of this is the application of common sense and generally straightforward to incorporate into your home theater lighting design, it’s also easy to overlook some
of the finer details that some enthusiasts seek as part of their vision. Let’s think about those things together now before it’s too late – and becomes difficult and
expensive to address.
Planning
As stated earlier, setting aside time to develop your home theater lighting plan is vital. You should have defined your vision for this and mapped it out in detail
before you ever reach the rough-in stage of your building project. Once you get past that point, it’s not the most trivial of activities to add or change the lighting
configuration for the room.
First things first…you need to take note of existing lighting – in the form of natural light. If any exists, will it exist once your home theater is complete? Or do
you plan to introduce elements into your design to reduce or eliminate it? Ultimately, this may have an impact on the volume of lights you incorporate into your plan
and the placement of those lights within the home theater itself.
Next, you need to consider what types of activities will take plan in your home theater. You need to pose several questions, some of which may include the following.
- Is your home theater going to be used exclusively to view movies?
- Will it be used to watch television or play video games?
- Will the room be a gathering spot for other social activities?
Other considerations you will need to make are related to the general makeup of your home theater. Will my home theater be painted a dark color or will it be painted
a light or neutral color? Is the ceiling also included in that color scheme or will I paint it a traditional white color? Will I incorporate furniture, wall fixtures,
or other things that might have reflective properties and if so, where will they likely be located? Will I be automating all, part, or none of my home theater setup?
These questions are really just a starting point. After you’ve thought through these things and defined what features your home theater will have, you will be ready
to determine what home theater lighting you will need and where you will position the lighting within the room.
Function
Next, you need to consider what function or purpose the home theater lighting you choose will have in your home theatre. Will the lighting be used to simply provide
light in the room? Are you trying to accent something, such as a piece of art or other fixture? Do you need lighting that will help provide direction to you or your
guests – such as lighting for steps or doorways? Below is a checklist of lighting functions to consider:
- Ceiling lights (i.e., recessed lights or otherwise)
- Wall lighting (i.e., sconces, if trying to emulate a real theater)
- Accent lighting (i.e., to highlight wall art, collectibles, etc.)
- Interior lighting for shelving units
- Floor lighting (to highlight walking areas, steps, etc.)
- Entry/exit lighting
- Lighted devices (backlit movie poster frame, mylar box, marquee, exit sign, etc.)
Location
Be sure to draw up some blueprints of your home theatre that provides both you and your contractor the approximate location of each light fixture. This will help you
gauge how much you will need and budget accordingly. It will also provide you with a discussion piece for your electrician. Ultimately, he needs to know where to run
the wires and how to group those lights that will be integrated into a single switch.
Lighting Control
Depending on your vision, you will want to consider what lights are intended to come on together within your home theater. Furthermore, you may even be considering
having some level of automation to control your lighting. You may also want lights to be dimmed or brightened to various levels or you may simply want your lighting
to switch on/off. Finally, you also might want to have specific lights operate independently from other lights in your theatre.
Lighting Ideas
Switches
A relatively cheap and inexpensive but cool effect you can add to your home theater lighting design is to purchase dimmable light switches that operate on a remote control. If you
choose to introduce automation into the mix, you’ll be able to control the lights (for example, slowly dim and turn the lights off as a movie starts) using a
multi-function home theater remote.
Recessed Lighting
This is a likely choice for your ceiling lights, but often overlooked in other areas. For example, you may incorporate a recessed display area or shelving unit in
your room design that you may want to use lighting to accent. Or perhaps you’re installing a in-wall media cabinet (for lack of better words) to house your home
theater equipment – it might be nice to have some interior lighting to help with seeing the front and/or back panels of the devices.
Baffle Trim for Recessed Lighting
If you are incorporating recessed lighting into your home theater lighting plan and you are also painting your room a dark color to keep the room as dark as possible
when watching movies, you should consider purchasing black colored baffle trim (the housing shell that lines the interior of the canister holding the light) or
painting them to match the color of your choice (perhaps the same color as your ceiling (to blend them in).
Wall Sconces
This is a must for those of you who are trying to emulate a real movie theater.
Stage/Step Lighting
If you integrate a stage into your home theater plan, you may want purchase specially designed lighting strips to line the floor of your stage area. Additionally,
you may want to embed small lights to highlight the area where someone should step.
Exit Sign
Pretty self explanatory, but this again is another staple for those who are trying to replicate various facets of a movie theater.
Movie Poster Frames, Mylar Boxes, & Marquees
The can be framed directly into your walls and ran on a dedicated switch. And it’s likely that you’ll spend less doing something like this as opposed to buying a
commercial backlit movie poster frame or mylar lightbox.
Home Theater Lighting → Design Guide