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 so completely into the room’s architecture that they are invisible until the covers are removed.
A Samsung 75″ OLED television was chosen over a projector — the right decision for a room designed to function in ambient light as well as darkness. OLED delivers the black levels and colour saturation that a projector cannot match in a room without full light control, and the 75″ screen size fills the field of view effectively at the seating distance available.
The Artcoustic speaker configuration is as follows:
- 2 × Artcoustic SL24-12 — front left and right, integrated into bespoke cabinetwork flanking the TV
- 1 × Artcoustic HSPL bespoke width soundbar — centre channel, mounted under the TV
- 1 × Artcoustic Control 3 subwoofer — integrated into the right-hand bookcase, covered in matching 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 to this room would not know that a surround sound system is present.
Acoustic Integration
The Anthem MRX-1120 AVR handles all amplification and decoding, with Anthem’s 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 the surround imaging. Even the bean bag positioned 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 the room’s lighting, with all sources — Sky, Apple TV, streaming — selectable from a single interface. The lighting design provides multiple scenes appropriate to the room’s dual function: bright and neutral for daytime use, warm and low for 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 home 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.
