Friday, December 03, 2010


Eco Home Theater Designing & Building

In the modern era of convenience and saving the environment, one of the best places to start turning yourself into an earth friendly resident of this planet is by building an eco-friendly home theater. Now, the theater does not have to seat fifty people and be located in a subterranean vault of a billion dollar mansion. Those with larger homes can create an earth friendly environment perfect for watching the classics or new releases with family and friends. For those who can afford to “go big” with a home theater with the massive screen, superior audio, and plush home theater seats even then it is not necessary to break the bank in order to be as environmentally friendly as possible with the design and construction.

Designing the Theater

You will be wanting to decide the main focus for the room, of course to watch the screen but is this sports den, games room or a classic movie theater a lot of people who are designing the theater for themselves use Google Sketch its free and great layout tool. There are also many helpful design blogs such as Design Milk that will fill you with inspiration with some wonderful set ups.



Materials for the Entire Room

An eco-friendly home theater is all about what materials are used to set the room. From the projector, or flat screen television, to the flooring and seats, any of the materials for a home theater can be earth friendly. When it comes to projectors or huge flat screen televisions for your viewing enjoyment, LED is the most earth friendly way to go. LEDs, or light emitting diodes, have been on the market in small scale for many years. Today’s technology is allowing LEDs to be included into large movie projectors and flat screen televisions, using up to 40% less electricity than the LCD screens and projectors in use now. There is also the option of an eco-standby mode on most LED projectors that will reduce the energy consumption rate by up to 80% when the device is on, but not actively projecting images.

Flooring and seats are other eco-friendly options that many homeowners may not be aware of. Bamboo is an infinitely renewable wood choice for flooring, along with cork and laminate flooring. There is also low pile eco-friendly carpet available on the market for a softer step and a smaller carbon footprint. Stage presence is important when creating a home theater environment and that presence can often be felt in the seating. If the planned home theater is going to seat more than 5-15 people, you may want to hunt down authentic antique
theater seats. If the thought of sitting where thousands have sat before doesn’t appeal to you, you can also find seating which is constructed from earth friendly and non-toxic materials.

Why Go Green?

Reducing the carbon footprint of everyone on the planet is one of the ways to help heal the environment. Even though a home theater is often thought of as a luxury most cannot afford, spending a little extra time, rather than money, to find eco-friendly materials and devices for your home theater can reduce your carbon footprint. Even those homeowners who are not building a large dedicated room for their home theater can re-engineer a smaller room in their home and remodel it as a movie viewing room for the family. The use of eco-friendly materials in one room in the house can lead the way to creating a total environmentally friendly home. 

This guest post ‘written by’ ..James Helliwell.


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