An entertainment room, if you’re lucky enough to have one, can be a great place to enjoy your hobbies without disturbing the other people in your home. There are many households that use their living rooms as their entertainment space, but if you have a spare room that is not seeing a lot of use (like your cluttered basement or attic), these steps can help you transform the space into one dedicated to having fun. Read on if your interest has been piqued.
Know what you want.
Are you looking to transform your space into a dedicated game room? A home cinema? Or would you prefer a multi-use room where you can work out, practice your guitar and singing skills, as well as somewhere for the younger members of your household, can play? Knowing what you want from your entertainment room will go a long way to making sure you keep on track with your project.
Consider your budget.
It’s an unfortunate fact that everything costs money, so you need to ensure you have a big enough budget to at least start the room. Decide on the essentials first then work your way down to desirables and the rest of the trimmings. Remember, this can be an on-going project and you’re likely to want to update your entertainment room in the future, so planning ahead is always a good idea. If I can give a personal example, as a massive gamer, my essentials when planning my gaming room were a flatscreen TV, a comfortable gaming chair, a low table for snacks and drinks and shelving for more consoles and games. Once I had those in place, I then looked at getting a cabinet to display my figurines and other memorabilia.
Use your imagination.
This feeds into the first point, but this is where you can refine your ideas further. For instance, do you want to install a little kitchenette to prepare snacks for visitors, or should you just have a fridge in the corner to store drinks? What kind of décor should you go for? If you’re part of a particular fandom, you might want to display memorabilia and the like, or you might want to replicate an iconic location from your favorite game or TV show (as an aside, one of my close friends, who is a big comic book fan, decided to turn his entertainment room into the Justice League’s Watchtower, complete with views of outer space.
Choose the right screen size and furniture for your room.
This is really important! When it comes to screen size, bigger isn’t always better. It’s important to remember to consider the distance between your television to your seating area. The same thing applies to furniture. You need to consider the size of your room and allow enough space to move around without bumping into things. Also, you want to feel cozy, not cramped, so putting to much furniture in the room is a definite no-no.
Hide the wires.
Nothing is more of an eyesore than tangled wires all over your room. Make sure to arrange all wires and cables neatly and out of the way. Even better, tape them down under the carpet so they are out of the way and no-one can trip over them. Make your entertainment room safe, clean, organized and fun.
Invest in a good storage system.
A bit of mess is always to be expected in an entertainment room, especially if you’ve opted for a multi-use room where your little ones also have free rein. However, when the fun is over and it’s time to clean up the mess, having enough storage space is essential. Make sure to invest in sturdy shelves, cupboards and cabinets where you can store movies, games, toys and the like until the next time they are needed.
Use sound-absorbing materials.
If you don’t want the noise to carry to other areas of the house, you can use absorbing materials like carpets, thick curtains and acoustic paneling to furnish the room. Aside from not letting the noise escape to other rooms, it can also improve the acoustics inside the room, which can really raise your enjoyment of movies and videogames.
After you have successfully decorated your entertainment room, you are now ready to have fun! We hope the above tips have been useful. Do you have any of your own you’d like to share in the comments below? We’d love to hear them.