If you have gone to the trouble of building a new home cinema room in your home then congratulations! You have done the hard part and now is time for the fun. In a previous article we discussed how construction of the room can ensure your acoustics are as good as possible and how to avoid sound leakage in to the rest of the home. There are some simple things you can do to make the most of your space, some are obvious and some aren't but it is handy to have them detailed.

In a newly built room you most likely have newly plastered walls ready for painting - this is the one room in the house were you can afford to be bold! The room is a dedicated cinema so you don't want the nice light colours you favour through the rest of the home, in fact dark and deep colours in this room will give a feeling of luxury and cosyness - the perfect atmosphere for a home cinema. Ideally paint should have a non-reflective quality to it - something like a soft sheen or even a textured paint finish. Utilising thick wallpaper can also produce good results acoustically as the paper will 'mop up' a certain amount of unwanted reflections.

In a new cinema we would always recommend carpet - a good carpet and underlay will stop a lot of sound travelling outside the room in addition to absorbing unwanted reflections. Again dark colours work best as they stop reflections and ensure that you are not distracted from the projector screen.

Seating is a huge part of the experience. Regardless of whether you choose to go for custom designed home cinema seating or an off the shelf sofa or chairs they must be comfortable! A good seat should enable you to sit watching a film for a couple of hours without feeling uncomfortable or restless. One of our clients compared our seating to airline first class comfort!

To summarise then be bold with dark colours and rich textures - not only will it make the room look and feel luxurious it will increase your enjoyment of the film!