Family Friendly Home Theater – 6 Simple Tips For Making Your Home Theater More Family Friendly

A home theater can be a great way for you and your family to spend quality time together. What makes a home theater family friendly? The following tips will give you ideas to help design your home theater with your family’s needs in mind.

Decorating Themes – What better way to create a special family environment then to give your room a theme and to decorate it accordingly. A theme will help you escape from reality and isn’t that what a home theater is all about. How about a sports theme with sports memorabilia from your family’s favorite team or from your children’s youth sports team along with some bleacher type seating. Or how about a space theme complete with sci-fi memorabilia and a starfield ceiling? The choices are endless. Be creative and involve your kids in the design decisions.

Gameroom – A home theater can be a great room to enjoy games as well as movies. Make sure your home theater has access for the latest video game consoles. In addition, if you have room a board game table, pool table, foosball table, or pinball machine can be great additions to the room and can provide hours of entertainment for kids and adults alike even after the movie is over.

Isolate your equipment – Believe me I know how tempting the flashing lights, buttons and knobs on your audio and video components can be for children. Even if you think you have your children well trained in not touching the equipment their curious friends are bound to be tempted to get their hands on the equipment when you are not watching. Rather then deciding not to have friends over or getting frustrated at the kids consider placing your equipment in a separate room or cabinet that is out of sight. There are many infrared and other options available for relaying audio video signals back and forth without your equipment being out in the open.

Video Rockers – Kids love these affordable, convenient seats for both movies and video gaming. They can be easily moved around the room, are kid sized and easy to maintain. They are a wonderful complement to your comfortable home theater seating.

Counter seating – In my house we enjoy pizza and a movie night. Having a counter conveniently placed behind the main seating allows kids (and adults) to comfortably enjoy food or drinks during the movie without fear of spilling all over the home theater seating. The counter can be a natural room divider or it can be placed at the very back of the room depending on your room configuration. A counter with comfortable seating is also an excellent way to be prepared for overflow seating, even during non eating functions.

Dark speckled carpet – Lets face it, counter or no counter there are going to be accidents and spills in your home theater, especially with kids. You can attempt to have a completely sterile environment with no food or drinks and give your family and guests a lecture before each show in order to protect your home theater or you can prepare for the inevitable. Dark speckled carpet will help hide some of the natural incidents that are bound to happen with any fun loving, active family.

By following some of the tips listed above you and your family can turn a normal, lifeless room and transform it into a room that can provide hours and hours of safe and lively family entertainment. Remember that a great home theater room is a room that can also be enjoyed by all, even when the tv is not on.