Luxury Home Cinema Installation & Design

Home Cinema Rooms Designed and Installed Since 1998

Custom Controls are a high-end home cinema design and installation company specialising in dedicated luxury cinema rooms. As experienced home cinema installers, we have been designing and installing home cinemas since 1998 across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the French Alps — from an intimate four-seat room in a London apartment to the most ambitious private screening rooms we have ever delivered, including an 18-seat IMAX Enhanced theatre in Dubai. Every installation is built to the same standard, whether it’s a compact luxury cinema room or a full-scale private theatre — the same rigour that makes a cinema at home genuinely rival a commercial screening room.

Certified Home Cinema Specialists

Five-time Crestron Integration Award winners — the most consecutive wins of any dealer in EMEA and a unique recognition of cinema design and installation excellence. Crestron Dealer of Distinction status. Steinway Lyngdorf RoomPerfect Certified — advanced training in acoustic design and room correction technology. Trinnov Certified Dealers — specialist training in high-end audio processor setup and calibration. These certifications represent training, standards and technical competency that translate directly into the quality of the home cinema we design and deliver, across more than 25 years of continuous installation work in London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the French Alps.

Home Cinema Design

Every home cinema we build is designed in full before any construction starts: room geometry, seating layout, acoustic treatment, screen size and position, loudspeaker placement and lighting are all fixed on paper first, because each one constrains the others. We work with architects and interior designers from the earliest planning stage, producing design drawings and construction specifications that are handed to contractors and builders. For clients without an existing design team, we manage the cinema design as a standalone commission. Read our complete home cinema design guide →

Cinema Room Acoustic Treatment

The room itself decides how a cinema sounds, more than any loudspeaker or processor placed in it. A room built to the wrong dimensions, with reflective surfaces and untreated room modes, will never sound right regardless of the quality of the speakers and processors installed. We design room geometry, specify acoustic materials and treatments, and supervise construction to ensure the acoustic performance matches the brief. For dedicated cinema rooms, full acoustic treatment is non-negotiable. For living room cinema systems, we design treatments that integrate with the room’s aesthetic. Read our acoustic treatment guide →

Scope and Scale

Every cinema we install includes the same full scope, whatever its size: acoustic design, construction specification, 4K or laser projection, Dolby Atmos audio, seating, Crestron and Lutron integration, and professional calibration. We have installed dedicated cinema rooms across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the French Alps — visit our London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai or Alps cinema pages for local case studies and contact details. We provide free, detailed consultations and quotations for every project, tailored to your room and your brief.

What Is the Difference Between a Home Cinema and a Media Room?

A dedicated home cinema is a single-purpose, fully treated room built around film and TV alone; a media room is a multi-purpose space — often a living room or open-plan area — designed to deliver a strong cinema experience while continuing to serve everyday life. The cinema gives the purest picture and sound, because every surface can be treated and the light fully controlled; the media room trades a little of that for a space the family uses every day.

Both start the same way: we design the room first, since room geometry, acoustic treatment, speaker layout and screen position all have to be right before any equipment is specified. And both finish the same way — every system is calibrated before handover, with audio calibration using Trinnov Altitude, Dirac Live or Anthem ARC depending on the processor, and ISF-standard video calibration using professional measurement tools. Read more about our calibration process →

Questions We’re Asked at the First Meeting

Most cinema projects begin with the same handful of questions. These are the ones clients raise most often when we first walk the space with them.

Do we need a dedicated room, or can our living room become a cinema?
Either can work well — it depends on how the room will be used. If the space needs to stay a comfortable living room, we design it as a media room, with speakers built into walls and ceilings, a screen or projector that disappears when not in use, and acoustic treatment hidden behind finishes the interior designer has chosen. If you want the best possible picture and sound, and a room that exists only for films, a dedicated cinema will always outperform it.

Can a basement, garage or loft be converted?
Yes, and some of our best rooms started that way. Basements are often ideal, with no windows and naturally good sound isolation; garages and lofts need more attention to insulation, ceiling height and, in a loft, sloping surfaces. We adapt the acoustic design and cabling to what is already there, so a converted space performs as well as a purpose-built one. You can see examples in our loft and attic conversions and our Pimlico basement cinema.

Will the cinema work with the rest of the house?
It should, and in our projects it always does. With Crestron or Lutron control, a single button dims the lights, closes the blinds, lowers the screen and starts the film, and the same system runs lighting, audio and climate throughout the home. The cinema becomes one room of a whole-house system, not a separate set of remotes.

Will you work with our architect and interior designer?
Yes — most of our cinemas are delivered alongside an existing design team. We provide the drawings, acoustic specifications and cabling schedules the builder needs, agree finishes with the interior designer so the technology disappears into the room, and stay involved through construction to handover. For clients without a design team, we manage the cinema design ourselves as a standalone commission.

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