Garage Conversion Home Cinema Installation
Professional installers of home automation and home cinemas
Garage Conversion Home Cinema – By Berkshire Based UK Home Cinemas – Case Study With Indicative Costs
Our Client invited us to discuss a potential project for a garage conversion home cinema installation in Surrey. He had contacted us after carefully studying the google reviews for home cinema specialist designers.
He had a large, double garage, which he was keen to convert into a luxury home cinema room. Like many garages, it contained some of the household utilities. These included a gas meter, a water softener and a large hot water tank. So the challenge for us, was to design the garage conversion, to maximise the available space for the home cinema room. We needed to do this in a way which would hide the plumbing and electrical items, so that they wouldn’t, detract from the appearance of the garage conversion home cinema installation. – This page is a case study of the project we have recently uploaded a timelapse video of this project on our youtube, you can watch the video below.
Firstly, here is a photo of the completed garage conversion home cinema
After this we will move on, with pictures of the build from start to finish and costs.
The Design And Build Process For This Garage Conversion Home Cinema
Design Discussions – garage conversion high end home cinema installation
The garage contains a large water tank and a water softener, and this had lead our clients to conclude that it would be necessary to partition off part of the space to form a separate room containing the water tank. Our clients had the vision of creating a very impressive home cinema with two rows of seating and a large screen. They also wanted to retain a small space, just inside the motorised roller door of the Garage, for storage of bikes or similar items.
Maximising the space for the home cinema
The garage was about 7.4 metres long, and about 4.7 metres wide, which is fairly generous. In spite of this we realised that partitioning off part of the back of the space, and part of the front, would not leave enough length for the home cinema.
So we needed to design a way to convert the double garage into a home cinema, whilst providing easy access to the various plumbing and electrical utilities. We needed to do this in a way which would keep the space available for the cinema as large as possible. It was important that the presence of the various electrical and water utilities should not detract from the appearance or the acoustics of the home cinema room.
Our aim would be to keep the space as large as possible, and this would provide the benefit that the surround speakers would not need to be too close to the seating positions. Locating the speakers further from the seating avoids the situation where a member of the audience could have a speaker right next to them.
Starting on the cinema design drawings
We returned to our office, to work on a detailed design for the cinema room, with these aims.
Our designer creates our home cinema room drawings using CAD design software. We aim to adhere to industry guidelines on speaker positioning, and screen size and position. Our designer also considers viewing angles, together with acoustic design. We make sure that every member of the audience will have an excellent view of the screen. Another key objective for our design work, for this garage conversion home cinema was, of course, to make it look amazing.
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Our colleagues is installing track and fabric (for another project) in this photo.
Design Solutions – Garage Conversion Home Cinema Installation In Surrey
Garage conversion home cinema with hidden speakers
For home cinema designs we usually think that its great to have lots of speakers, but its even better if you can’t see the speakers. This is because not seeing any speakers can help to make the experience more immersive for an audience. It can help to create the illusion that sound can come from almost any direction. So we considered the idea of lining the room with fabric panels, which would allow sound to pass through almost unchanged. Because this seemed to be ideal for our client’s garage conversion home cinema installation in surrey.
For this Garage conversion home cinema installation, we felt that lining the home cinema room with acoustically transparent fabric panels would be the key to delivering on our design objectives. Fabric panels could be used to hide many of the plumbing and electrical utilities in the space. Our client needed to be able to quickly remove panels to gain access the plumbing and electrical utilities. This was perfectly feasible.
Room acoustics and speaker positioning
We knew that we would be able to hide some suitable materials behind fabric wall panels, in order to improve the room acoustics for the garage conversion home cinema. Using acoustically transparent fabric wall panels would enable us to position speakers inside some of the unseen spaces and therefore close to their ideal positions. With this approach, we would be able to position the speakers slightly further away from the audience.
So we produced a set of technical drawings of timber frames, which we would install around the garage conversion home cinema room. We would attach the acoustically transparent fabric panels to the timber frames.
We planned to use a solution known as track and fabric to create the fabric panels on site. Our design drawings also included details for the creation of the screen wall, with features to give it great sound proofing capabilities.
Garage conversion home cinema – sound proofing
Reasonable sound proofing is of course essential for a garage conversion home cinema installation. We had planned to achieve the sound proofing through a combination of methods. Using a stud wall with resilient channel, can decouple vibrations and works well in conjunction with two layers of acoustic plasterboard. We designed the screen wall with a layer of rockwool in a cavity , we also designed it with a block wall behind it . The block wall was mechanically isolated from the stud wall.
We drew a separate timber framed wall with a plywood face. The carpenters were going to construct this to hold a set of Dali phantom in wall speakers the correct distance behind an acoustically transparent projection screen.
The builders would seal the floor and then screed and insulate it with Celotex.
We designed a raised floor for the 2nd row of seating. Our cad drawings included a ceiling bulkhead with a central coffer. We chose to make this the right size for a set of star ceiling panels. Our Designer did this because our client wanted to have the option to add a star star ceiling at some point in the future.
Home cinema – Lighting and cabinets
We set blue LED strips into aluminium channel in the ceiling coffer and also between some of the fabric wall panels. Our team installed warm white LED strips in aluminium channel, fixed to the raised floor platform and set into the carpet. The floor LEDs were there to light a path to and from the seats.
We designed the screen wall with a space below the screen, into which a pair of low level, black glass covered equipment cabinets would fit. These equipment cabinets would house the audio visual equipment for the garage conversion home cinema in surrey. We selected cabinets on wheels so that they can be easily pushed into the space below the screen.
Garage Conversion Work – With Features For High Performance Home Cinema
We worked with an excellent firm of builders, who meticulously followed our design drawings to convert the garage into a room. They converted the room and added the exact features, which we had specified in our set of garage conversion home cinema design drawings.
Floor platforms and ceiling bulkhead
The builders’ first task was to insulate the floor and raise it to the same level as the floors throughout the ground floor of the house. They did this by sealing the garage floor then applying a sand and cement screed, followed by a layer of Celotex and then chipboard flooring.
We had specified a raised platform for the 2nd row of seats, and a half level step. These were made with blockwork, followed by bricks and timber joists then chipboard flooring.
Next the carpenters constructed the Ceiling bulkhead around the outside edges of the ceiling. The ceiling bulkhead would eventually house a set of dimmable LED Downlights and it was designed to provide the perfect location for a set of LED Strips which would eventually deliver a wash of blue light around the sides of the ceiling coffer.
We had chosen the size of the ceiling coffer to fit a set of standard sized star ceiling panels, because our client advised us that he may wish to add a star ceiling in the future. This would be a possible upgrade to the garage conversion home cinema installation in Surrey.
Framework for home cinema fabric walls
On some of our projects we do all of the carpentry to create screen walls and lighting bulkheads, but in the case of this project we designed these features, but we asked the builder’s carpenters to install them. Our designs for the garage conversion were in the form of a full set of scale drawings, which we created in ProgeCad.
The full set of drawings included all of the bespoke elements such as the fabric panels and speaker positions for the home cinema installation. While the carpenters created the timber framework, we ran in the audio-visual cables and the cables for LED strips. We planned to set LED strips into the ceiling, and into the walls and into the raised floor.
By the time the carpenters had finished their work, the room had a series of wooden frames on most of the walls, which had been sized and positioned exactly as per our design drawings. So everything was ready for us to add the specialist materials for the cinema room.
Home Cinema Installation In Surrey – Speakers, Acoustic Treatments, Screen and Fabric Wall Panels
We designed the room to have LED strips between acoustically transparent fabric wall panels. So we installed aluminium channel to house the LED strips in the garage conversion home cinema.
We fitted fabric walling track onto the timber frames around the room, we cut the track to form mitred corners, so that an installed area of fabric track looks a lot like a picture frame, which is then covered by the fabric and therefore hidden from view. The track which we generally use is shaped to hold the fabric in such a way as to form bevelled edges in the resulting sections of stretched fabric wall.
Access to utilities in a garage conversion cinema
In some areas we needed the wall panels to be removable, for access to plumbing and electrical utilities in the garage conversion home cinema, so we made removable wooden frames, and then we fitted fabric track to the wooden frames. This can be seen in one of the photos on the left. The result is that all of the fabric wall panels around the room, look much the same, but some of them can easily be removed for access to items which may require maintenance. We positioned timber battens directly behind the fabrics in some key positions, so that picture hooks could be fitted to support various framed movie posters.
In order to achieve superb room acoustics we fitted acoustic absorption panels behind the screen and we fitted acoustic diffusion and absorption panels in various other locations. All of these are hidden behind fabrics.
Speaker installation
We fitted Dali Phantom in wall speakers of various models throughout the room , because we are impressed with the way that they sound. Our designs incorporated plywood enclosures for the speakers, so the speakers are set into unseen housings behind the fabric. The plywood housings had been created along with the timber framing work because this was in accordance with our design drawings for the garage conversion home cinema installation in surrey.
Home Cinema – Audio-Visual and Control4
Our audio visual specialists installed the source devices and the Anthem MRX-1140 AV Receiver into the equipment cabinets, so that everything was arranged and cabled neatly.
We connected up and positioned the two Dali K14F Subwoofers, so that the bass from the speaker system would be combined with sub bass from these excellent subwoofers.
We programmed the control4 system to provide control for all of the equipment and for the lighting, so that everything would be user friendly for our client.
Room correction software can further improve the sonic performance of a home cinema, so our audio specialists used anthem room correction to analyse the acoustics and further improve the audio performance of the space.
Garage Conversion Home Cinema Timelapse
Why not take a look at the time-lapse video above of this fantastic garage conversion home cinema project.
The cost for a garage conversion home cinema?
This Home cinema room was built to a high spec, with a good budget. We have completed some Home Cinema projects with larger budgets than this and others with much smaller budgets. In the case of this project the garage conversion work was carried out to a very high standard, so a reasonable chunk of the budget was required in order to make the garage into a habitable room.
A garage conversion home cinema project similar to this one would cost just over £67K (inc VAT)
This breaks down as follows:
Garage Conversion building work – Floor screeding and insulation, ceiling bulkhead, raised floor, timber framing, screen wall, ceiling bulkheads and mains electrical work – £23,500
Carpeting – £1700
Design work, wall panelling LED lighting and audio visual equipment with installation – £31,379
Motorised reclining home cinema seats – £11,000
Grand total – £67,579
(The Example prices listed above include manpower/installation and VAT )
Customer Testimonial – Garage conversion home cinema
We received this very kind message from our delighted client after we had completed the project:
Richard’s expertise and consultative approach, makes him a real pleasure to work with.
The project turned our double garage into a home cinema room run via Control 4. The garage itself posed a number of constraints (location of the consumer unit, water cylinder, heating controls, etc), which Richard worked through to provide us with a number of options. Their approach encompassed collaboratively working with the building contractor, carpet provider, and cinema seating provider. UK Home Cinemas fitted us the perfect home cinema, and the end result exceeded our expectations. We cannot recommend them Richard and the team highly enough..
Please see the live review below.
Richard and his excellent team created an absolutely amazing cinema room for us, beyond our expectations and within our budget. They were polite, tidy and worked diligently. Can't recommend them highly enough. If you're considering making a cinema room, this company is the best, so professional and a pleasure to deal with. We've had our cinema room for a couple of years now, and we absolutely love it, as do friends and family.
Richard’s expertise and consultative approach, makes him a real pleasure to work with. The project turned our double garage into a home cinema room run via Control 4. The garage itself posed a number of constraints (location of the consumer unit, water cylinder, heating controls, etc), which Richard worked through to provide us with a number of options. Their approach encompassed collaboratively working with the building contractor, carpet provider, and cinema seating provider. UK Home Cinemas fitted us the perfect home cinema, and the end result exceeded our expectations. We cannot recommend them Richard and the team highly enough.
Richard from UK home cinemas is great at what he does and pleasure to work with. Richard spent countless hours discussing our design to ensure we could use our new room for all activities we wanted. He was very patient showing and discussing with us potential options and alternatives for what was novel idea and fairly complex design. We had to take into account number of limitation and particularities with heating, air conditioning, lighting and existing speaker and network installation. Richard designed, built and installed perfect acoustic housings for our in-wall speakers as well as number of other features. He and his team worked tirelessly to ensure we get results we wanted. Richard and his team worked collaboratively with subcontractors and our builder.
We would highly recommend UK home cinemas for any media room installation project.
Fantastic service. Richard was very helpful and offered lots of great advice. Even helped give me some ideas when building my own home cinema room. Fantastic service once again and would definitely recommend.
Out of hours, I reached out to UK Home Cinemas for help with a technical problem on my home cinema system. Over a video call, they quickly provided me with exactly the right technical assistance and solved the problem. This prevented me from incurring a significant expense.
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Competitive packages are available for complete home cinema systems with installation - Tel 01344 773695