Basement Home Cinema Room — Kensington, London

Summary

75″ TV Based Cinema Installation
Bespoke Artcoustic Speakers in 5.2.1 Format
Anthem AVR providing 3D audio
Custom Cabinet Work
Crestron Control & Lighting System

A Living Room Cinema That Disappears — Artcoustic, Anthem and Crestron in Kensington

The most demanding brief in home cinema design is not the dedicated room — it is the room that must function as both a cinema and a living space, with no visible concession to either. This basement home cinema room in a Kensington mews house was built to exactly that standard. When the system is off, it is a reception room: a Chesterfield sofa, custom cabinetry, colour-matched walls, bespoke artwork. When it is on, it delivers Dolby Atmos surround sound from a full Artcoustic 5.2.1 speaker package, driven by an Anthem MRX-1120 AVR, with every speaker integrated completely into the room’s architecture and invisible until the covers are removed.

The Display and Speaker System

A Samsung 75″ OLED television was chosen over a projector — OLED delivers the black levels and colour saturation that a projector cannot match in ambient light, and the 75″ screen fills the field of view effectively at the available seating distance. The Artcoustic speaker configuration:

2 × Artcoustic SL24-12 — front left and right, integrated into bespoke cabinetwork flanking the TV
1 × Artcoustic HSPL bespoke-width soundbar — centre channel, under the TV
1 × Artcoustic Control 3 subwoofer — integrated into the right-hand bookcase behind acoustic cloth
2 × Artcoustic SL8-4 — rear left and right, colour-matched to the walls
2 × Artcoustic Architect 4-2 — height channels, colour-matched to the ceiling

Every speaker is finished to match its surrounding surface. Without prior knowledge, a visitor would not know that a surround sound system is present.

Acoustic Integration

The Anthem MRX-1120 AVR handles all amplification and decoding, with ARC room correction software performing calibration after installation. Custom Artcoustic acoustic absorber panels — mounted above the Chesterfield sofa with bespoke artwork printed across three panels — address the rear wall reflection that would otherwise compromise surround imaging. Even the bean bag under the staircase serves a specific acoustic function: a bass trap at a critical room boundary position. Nothing in this room is incidental.

Installation

Design

Calibration

Treatments

Seating

Crestron Control

A Crestron control system manages the full audio-visual experience and room lighting, with all sources — Sky, Apple TV, streaming — selectable from a single interface. Multiple lighting scenes cover daytime use and cinema viewing. One button press transitions the room from reception space to cinema, selecting the source, adjusting the lighting and waking the amplification.

The Result

A basement cinema room that is indistinguishable from a well-designed living room until the moment it performs. The integration of Artcoustic speakers into the architecture — colour-matched, concealed within cabinetwork and behind acoustic artwork — is as thorough as anything we have delivered. It is precisely this kind of installation that demonstrates what is possible when acoustic performance and interior design are treated as a single problem rather than two competing ones.