Home Entertainment Steps
STEP TWO: LOCATION
What is the best place for your television? Which way should it be oriented?
If you have not already decided this, or if you would like us to apply our experience to confirm your planned location, we can help - by developing an overall plan of your room and experimenting (on paper!) with different television locations and orientations – and different seating arrangements. Our AUTOCAD drafting software makes it easy for us to do this. Here are a few of the parameters that we consider in determining a television’s optimal location and orientation:
A. Seating Arrangements: Ideally, the locations of sofas and chairs should be suitable both for conversation (without the intrusion of a television) and for television viewing.
B. Number of viewers: Design both for viewing by two people (husband and wife) as well as by larger groups. This can be achieved by allowing the television to swivel.
C. Expanded viewing: People often want to be able to watch the family room’s television from the kitchen.
D. Traffic corridors and traffic patterns: Site the television so that traffic does not cross between the television and its viewers. Avoid constricting doorways with cabinets in close proximity.
E. Fireplace considerations: We have designed so many cabinets to accommodate televisions and fireplaces that this website has a section dedicated to “Televisions with Fireplaces”, to enlighten you as to the variety of possible approaches.
F. Window locations: Consider (a) avoiding window “glare”; (b) avoiding the blocking of window lighting by adjacent cabinetry.
G. Room architecture: Consider locations of bulkheads. Avoid a “crammed” look (Goitz Entertainment Center)
H. “Centerpiece” considerations: Do you want the entertainment center to be a dramatic attractive centerpiece in the room (Megaludis Entertainment Center) or do you want to downplay the television, making it subtly “dissolve” into the woodwork (Dickenson Entertainment Center)?