Interior Design Guide

You're ready for a home theater set-up, and you're quivering with anticipation at the thought of a fully immersive movie experience right in your own home. But Where do you begin? Here's what you need to know. The Room : • Room shape.  Square rooms tend to produce odd harmonic distortions. • Walls.  If you're tempted to staple inverted egg cartons all over your walls to muffle sound, relax. • Flooring.  Wall-to-wall carpet, with a new cushy pad underneath, absorbs ambient sound and contributes to coziness. • Wall/room color.  Paint your walls as dark as you can stand them. The Sound : • Speaker placement.  A typical home theater features 5.1 surround sound, meaning there are five full-range speakers and one low-range specialist, the woofer.  You'll place three speakers and the woofer toward the front of the room, and the two remaining speakers on either side and slightly behind your viewing position. Keep speakers at least ...