Home Cinema Installer Cheshire — Design, Installation & Calibration

Home Cinema Design and Installation for Cheshire Properties

Custom Controls are specialist home cinema designers and installers serving Cheshire and the North West, with more than 25 years of cinema room design, installation and acoustic engineering behind us. Our Cheshire portfolio runs from double garage conversions in Hale to a glass-walled garden cinema near Knutsford and a multi-zone entertainment complex in Prestbury. We are 5 x Crestron Integration Award winners, unique in EMEA as the only company to have won the award five times, and five consecutive times. We are also a Crestron Dealer of Distinction. Our Cheshire office is in Didsbury, Manchester.

Cheshire is ideal cinema country. The county’s large detached properties, generous garden footprints and separate outbuildings offer acoustic isolation that urban properties rarely provide. A double garage or a garden building, properly converted, can deliver a cinema that outperforms many purpose-built internal rooms, because the structure keeps the sound away from the rest of the house.

Home Cinema

Cinema Design

Calibration

Acoustics

Seating

Types of Home Cinema We Install in Cheshire

Garage cinema conversions. The double garage is one of Cheshire’s most successful cinema room formats. The garage door is retained externally, preserving the street scene, and an insulated acoustic wall built inside it houses the front speakers and treatment. The existing concrete floor provides acoustic mass, and a detached or semi-detached garage keeps sound transmission to neighbouring rooms to a minimum. Our luxury Cheshire garage cinema and our Hale garage conversion are both reference projects for this approach.

Garden cinema rooms. For Cheshire properties with space for a garden structure, a garden cinema room is the acoustic ideal: no shared walls, no sound path to the house and the freedom to play at reference volume at any hour. Our garden cinema near Knutsford, with two glass walls managed by motorised acoustic curtains, is our definitive Cheshire garden cinema reference.

Dedicated internal cinema rooms. Where garage or garden space is not available or not wanted, a dedicated internal cinema room in a spare reception room, study or basement delivers a full cinema experience without the construction of an outbuilding. Our Knutsford cinema, a 6m x 8m room running into a bay window, shows how an internal room can combine formal cinema seating with everyday use. We model every internal room acoustically before specifying equipment.

Media rooms and entertainment spaces. Where a room has to work for sport, parties and films, we design open-plan spaces in which the cinema, a games area and a bar each have their own AV and lighting. Our Prestbury entertainment complex is the reference for this format.

The Technology — What We Specify for Cheshire Cinemas

4K laser projection from Sony and JVC. Sony projection features across our Cheshire cinemas, from the Sony VPL-VW760ES native 4K laser projector in the Knutsford garden cinema to the Sony 4K laser projectors in the colour-matched Knutsford room and the luxury garage cinema. Read our projector guide →

Acoustically transparent screens, with the front speakers directly behind the screen so sound and picture are aligned. The colour-matched Knutsford room uses a 180-inch Screen Excellence screen, and the Hale, Prestbury and Knutsford garden cinemas each use 3.8m screens. Read our screen guide →

Artcoustic speaker systems, our primary Cheshire cinema speaker specification: modular, scalable and available in any finish, including colour-matched to the paint, as in the colour-matched Knutsford room. We also specify Krix, as on our modern Cheshire cinema room. Read more about Artcoustic →

Trinnov and Anthem processing. Trinnov for our most demanding installations, as in Prestbury, and Anthem with Anthem Room Correction, as in the Knutsford garden cinema. Room correction calibration is part of every installation.

Kaleidescape movie servers, delivering lossless Dolby Atmos and full 4K HDR. Read our Kaleidescape guide →

Crestron and Lutron integration. Our Cheshire cinemas are typically integrated with Crestron control and Lutron lighting, so one button press dims the lights, starts the projector, selects the source and lowers the screen.

Home Cinema Calibration Cheshire

We calibrate every Cheshire cinema installation and offer professional home cinema calibration as a standalone service for cinema rooms installed by other companies across the North West. Our calibration service uses Dirac Live, Trinnov Optimizer and ISF-standard video calibration tools.

Audio calibration sets speaker levels, distances, crossover points and equalisation from measurements taken across the seating area, so every seat hears a balanced soundfield rather than one ideal position. Video calibration uses professional measurement to set the projector or display to the reference standard, so colour, brightness and contrast are what the film-maker intended. Rooms we calibrate are re-checked at service visits, because projector brightness and room furnishings change over time.

Home Cinema Service, Renovation & Maintenance Cheshire

We provide ongoing service and maintenance for Cheshire cinema rooms we have installed and for rooms installed by other companies. Our maintenance covers an annual system health check and calibration review, projector laser health monitoring, Kaleidescape server management, Crestron and Lutron programming updates, fault diagnosis and repair, with priority response on annual maintenance contracts. For rooms that were poorly installed originally, or that have fallen behind current audio and video formats, we also offer full takeover, renovation and recalibration. Read more about our system takeover, repair and renovation service →

Cheshire Areas We Serve

Alderley Edge · Wilmslow · Prestbury · Knutsford · Hale · Hale Barns · Bowdon · Altrincham · Bramhall · Poynton · Macclesfield · Nantwich · Chester · Tarporley · Northwich · Frodsham · Congleton and all Cheshire postcodes. We also work regularly across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the wider North of England.

Cheshire cinema projects are designed and installed by our team based at the Didsbury office, who also handle calibration and servicing after handover. We work closely with local architects, builders and garage conversion specialists, providing the cabling schematics and construction drawings they need to build the room shell correctly, as we did for the build team on the colour-matched Knutsford room. The same engineers stay with the project from the first survey to the last calibration visit.

Home Cinema Projects in Cheshire

Our Cheshire cinemas range from compact garage conversions to rooms at the heart of large entertainment complexes. Each of the projects below has its own write-up describing the design and the equipment, and the case study that follows covers our award-winning glass-walled garden cinema near Knutsford.

Home cinema with speakers colour-matched to the paint, Knutsford, Cheshire

Case Study: Colour-Matched Cinema Room, Knutsford

A 6m x 8m cinema room running into a bay window with doors out to the garden, designed for a warm and intimate feel. Six electrically reclining leather seats with independent headrest and footrest control face a 180-inch (roughly 4.5m) Screen Excellence screen lit by a Sony 4K laser projector.

Artcoustic speakers are used throughout: three front channels and two subwoofers behind the screen, surrounds on the side and rear walls and a pair of ceiling speakers for Dolby Atmos, with every wall-mounted speaker colour-matched to the Little Greene paint so the system disappears into the decoration.

Because the house was undergoing full renovation and extension, we produced cabling schematics and construction drawings for the build team, then installed and calibrated the system after decoration. The client’s lounge chair swivels to face the garden, and bean bags take extra viewers. The same team went on to design the whole-home entertainment and mood lighting for the wider property. Read the full write-up →

Case Study: Luxury Garage Cinema, Cheshire

An unused 18ft x 20ft (roughly 5.5m x 6m) double garage converted into a cinema room that seats six on Home Cinema Modules Sirius seating, two individual seats flanking two double sofas, with room for two more viewers on bean bags. A Sony 4K laser projector drives an Artcoustic 7.2.4 system.

The garage doors were kept so the outside of the house is unchanged: a 400mm-deep false screen wall inside them houses the Artcoustic front speakers and insulates and soundproofs the doors, and even at reference volume there is no noticeable sound leakage.

The side walls are lined with lower-profile stud work incorporating speakers and acoustic treatments, the suede fabric ceiling is lit by dimmable LED strip in built-out coving, and every light is dimmed through Lutron. Keeping the garage door externally meant no planning permission and no structural alteration to the main house. Read the full write-up →

Garage conversion home cinema with acoustic stud wall, Hale, Cheshire

Case Study: Garage Conversion Cinema, Hale

A double garage in Hale transformed into a dedicated cinema, with the performance built behind the screen wall: an insulated acoustic stud wall houses the front speakers, the two subwoofers and a substantial quantity of acoustic absorption, wrapped in fabric with the 3.8m screen mounted over it. The up-and-over garage door stays exactly as it was.

The Sony laser projector and 3.8m screen are the combination we install in the vast majority of our cinema rooms, producing a crisp, clear image that rivals an OLED or plasma TV. An Artcoustic 7.2.2 Dolby Atmos system serves a bespoke velvet wrap-around sofa on the opposite wall, and the thick pile carpet was chosen for its acoustic contribution.

The stud wall at the screen end does two jobs: it improves the room’s acoustic profile and it minimises sound leakage to the outside of the property. Lutron lighting scenes and Crestron control complete the room. Read the full write-up →

Home entertainment complex cinema with Artcoustic speakers and a 3.8m screen, Prestbury, Cheshire

Case Study: Entertainment Complex, Prestbury

A home cinema built into an open-plan entertainment space beneath the gym of a new swimming pool and gym complex in the grounds of one of Cheshire’s finest halls. The cinema end has a 3.8m acoustically transparent screen, a ceiling-mounted Sony projector and four bespoke Cineak Intimo seats with four bar stools behind, while the rest of the room offers a pool table area, a lounge for nine and a kitchen.

The sound is a 5.2.2 Artcoustic layout with the front channels installed directly behind the acoustically transparent screen and a Trinnov receiver and amplifier package driving it, so dialogue and effects come from the picture rather than from speakers beside it. The lounge for nine has its own speakers, which can play background music or carry the full cinema soundtrack.

The brief was a place to entertain friends and family, and the cinema end is built to hold its own as a proper screening room inside that open plan. Beyond the film, a 65-inch Samsung at the pool table shares the same Sky, Apple TV and Amazon Fire sources or runs independently. Read the full write-up →

Modern home cinema room with Little Greene Dark Lead walls, Cheshire

Case Study: Modern Cinema Room, Cheshire

A 6m x 7m cinema room inside a new home entertainment complex that also includes garaging, a pool, a gym and terraced seating. The room was modelled in software before construction to optimise the Krix and Trinnov audio system, and the treatments and speakers are covered in fabric matched to the Little Greene Dark Lead walls so the room reads as one dark, calm volume.

Seating is motorised Cineak Fortuny in dark grey leather with in-arm cupholders, and the rear row sits on a 300mm step for clear sightlines. When the room is switched off the seats return to their home position, and with no natural light the lighting dims automatically when a film starts, with the curtain spotlights and each row controllable independently.

Beyond the room itself, four displays and three additional stereo audio zones share the cinema sources across the complex, so a film paused in the cinema can be continued on a poolside display. Read the full write-up →

Glass-walled garden cinema studio near Knutsford, Cheshire

Case Study: Glass-Walled Garden Cinema, Knutsford

A home cinema should not have glass walls, yet this garden cinema studio near Knutsford has glass on two sides and performs superbly. The clients wanted to see their car collection through large windows on one side and remain visible from the swimming pool and main house on the other, and the room was designed as part of a landscaping project, so the glass had to stay. The installation won Artcoustic’s Install of the Month award.

When a film starts, motorised floor-to-ceiling curtains in multiple layers of specialist acoustic fabric close across both glass walls. The fabric hangs in a Tempo Wave configuration, gathered to increase its depth and absorption, so the studio behaves acoustically like a well-designed cinema and opens fully to the garden when it is not in use. With the walls covered, Artcoustic P6-12 array speakers sit in fabric-wrapped bulkheads above the curtain line, angled down to the seats, while the front channels and subwoofers sit behind the acoustically transparent screen and the ceiling carries the Dolby Atmos height channels.

An Anthem AVR decodes and powers the 7.4.2 system, and Anthem Room Correction calibrates it with the curtains closed, measuring several listening positions so both rows hear a balanced result. A Sony VPL-VW760ES native 4K laser projector fills the 3.8m acoustically transparent screen, eight Cineak seats sit in two rows, and a bar at the rear makes the room as suited to entertaining as to private viewing. Read the full case study →

Frequently Asked Questions — Home Cinema Cheshire

Can you convert a garage into a cinema room in Cheshire?
Yes, and it is one of our most common Cheshire project types. Our luxury Cheshire garage cinema turned an 18ft x 20ft double garage into a room seating six with an Artcoustic 7.2.4 system, and our Hale conversion fits a 3.8m screen and an Artcoustic 7.2.2 Dolby Atmos system.

Does a garage cinema conversion need planning permission?
On our Cheshire garage conversions the garage door is retained externally, with an insulated acoustic wall built inside it. On the luxury Cheshire garage cinema this meant no planning permission and no structural alteration to the main house were required.

Can you build a garden cinema room in Cheshire?
Yes. Our garden cinema studio near Knutsford keeps glass walls on two sides, managed by motorised Tempo Wave acoustic curtains, and won Artcoustic’s Install of the Month award.

Do you offer home cinema calibration as a standalone service in Cheshire?
Yes. We calibrate every cinema we install and offer professional calibration for Cheshire cinema rooms installed by other companies, using Dirac Live, Trinnov Optimizer and ISF-standard video calibration tools.

Do you service, renovate and take over home cinemas installed by other companies in Cheshire?
Yes. We provide service, maintenance, takeover and renovation for Cheshire cinema rooms regardless of who installed them, including recalibration and updates to current audio and video formats.

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