Garden Home Cinema Room, Cheshire

A Glass-Walled Cinema Studio near Knutsford

A home cinema room should not have glass walls. Glass is reflective, acoustically problematic and incompatible with the light control that good projection demands. This garden cinema studio near Knutsford, Cheshire, has glass walls on two sides — and it performs superbly. It stands as one of our more technically satisfying projects: a room that should not have worked, solved through careful design, lateral thinking and the right choice of equipment. The result was recognised with Artcoustic’s Install of the Month award.

The Brief and the Challenge

The clients wished to view their car collection through large windows on one side of the room, while remaining visible from the swimming pool and main house on the other. The room was designed as part of a landscaping project — an architectural statement as much as a cinema room — and the brief explicitly required the glass to remain. Our task was to make it perform to a high standard within those constraints.

Rather than compromise the brief, the answer had to come from the design itself. As on every dedicated cinema we design, the room was planned from the acoustics outward — room treatment, speaker layout, screen size and seating were resolved together before the equipment was specified, because in a room like this each one constrains the others.

Solving a room like this drew on every one of our core cinema services, from the acoustic design and fabric finishes to the calibration and seating. It is also a clear example of how much of a cinema’s performance is decided at the design stage, long before any equipment is installed.

The Acoustic Solution

Glass walls create two problems for cinema rooms: they reflect sound waves back into the space, creating a muddled audio environment, and they make conventional speaker placement impossible. We addressed both simultaneously. When the cinema is in use, motorised floor-to-ceiling curtains made from multiple layers of specialist acoustic fabric close across both glass walls, converting a glass-walled studio into an acoustically manageable space. The fabric is installed in a “Tempo Wave” configuration — gathered to increase the depth of material and maximise sound absorption. The result is a room that behaves acoustically like a well-designed cinema when it needs to, and opens entirely to the garden and car collection when it does not.

Artcoustic Speaker Installation

With glass walls covered by acoustic curtains, conventional surround speaker placement was not possible. Artcoustic P6-12 array speakers are installed in acoustic fabric-wrapped bulkheads above the curtain line, angled down toward the listening positions. This keeps the speakers above the curtain track, allowing the curtains to operate freely, while the angled array ensures sound reaches every seat at the correct level and angle. The front stage sits behind the acoustically transparent screen with full left, centre and right channels plus subwoofers, and the ceiling carries Dolby Atmos height channel speakers. The quality of this solution — and the room’s resulting performance — is what earned the installation Artcoustic’s Install of the Month award.

Artcoustic’s array speakers are designed to meet and exceed the Dolby Atmos output requirement of 105–115dB at the reference listening position, and their high sensitivity makes reference-level dynamics achievable with comparatively modest amplifier power. That efficiency is what allows a single Anthem AVR to drive the full 7.4.2 system convincingly.

Anthem Processing and Calibration

An Anthem AVR provides Dolby Atmos decoding and amplification for the 7.4.2 system. Anthem Room Correction calibrates the entire system within the acoustic environment the closed curtains create, measuring the room at multiple listening positions so both rows of seats hear a balanced result. As with every system we install, calibration is a mandatory part of the handover: speaker levels, distances, crossover points and equalisation are measured and set in the finished room, and the Atmos height layer is calibrated with the same care as the main channels.

Projection, Screen and Seating

A Sony VPL-VW760ES 4K laser projector delivers the image onto a 3.8m acoustically transparent projector screen. The VPL-VW760ES uses native 4K SXRD panels (4096 × 2160) and a Z-Phosphor laser light source rated at 2,000 lumens and up to 20,000 hours of operation, with HDR10 and HLG support and Picture Position Memory for different screen formats. Eight Cineak home cinema seats are arranged in two rows, each with the sightlines and comfort for a long viewing session. A rear bar area makes the room as suited to entertaining as to private use.

The Result

A cinema room that does everything a cinema room should not be able to do given its architecture. The glass walls remain, the car collection is visible, the swimming pool view is preserved — and when a film starts, the acoustic curtains close, the Artcoustic system engages, and the room performs at a level that reflects the quality of thinking that went into solving it. Artcoustic recognised this installation as one of their finest examples of creative speaker integration with their Install of the Month award. It remains our definitive Cheshire garden cinema reference, and the clearest proof we have that the right design thinking solves briefs other installers would simply say no to.

Frequently Asked Questions — Glass-Walled Cinema, Cheshire

Can a cinema room have glass walls?
Yes, with the right acoustic solution. This Cheshire cinema retains glass walls on two sides — closed during film viewing by specialist multi-layer acoustic curtains in a “Tempo Wave” configuration, which absorb sound and create a manageable acoustic environment, then opened fully when the room is not in cinema use.

Why did this installation win Artcoustic’s Install of the Month?
The award recognised the creative speaker placement solution — Artcoustic P6-12 array speakers mounted in angled, fabric-wrapped bulkheads above the acoustic curtain line, allowing full surround performance in a room where conventional wall-mounted speaker placement was impossible.

How do you treat acoustics in a room with large glass windows?
Specialist acoustic curtains — multiple layers of heavy, sound-absorbing fabric, gathered to increase material depth — are the most effective solution for managing glass-wall reflections without permanently altering the room. They can be opened when the room is not in cinema use, restoring the view and natural light.

Which projector and sound system are used?
A Sony VPL-VW760ES native 4K laser projector on a 3.8m acoustically transparent screen, with an Artcoustic 7.4.2 Dolby Atmos speaker package powered and calibrated by an Anthem AVR.

How many seats does the cinema have?
Eight Cineak home cinema seats in two rows, with a bar area at the rear of the room.

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Project Gallery

The garden cinema with the curtains open and closed. The first image shows the room open to the car collection on one side and the swimming pool on the other, and the second shows the Tempo Wave acoustic curtains closed across both glass walls with a film on the 3.8m screen. The final view looks back from the screen across the two rows of seats to the bar at the rear of the room.