Home Cinema Lighting Control

You’ve invested a lot in that state-of-the-art home cinema screen, so it goes without saying that you want to use it to its full potential. Not that it’s always so simple. Too much -or even too little- light filtering into your dedicated AV room can have a serious impact on the picture quality, contrast, and even affecting how hard your eyes need to work to take in the sights on the screen.

That’s where a solid dimming lighting solution really comes into its own, enabling home cinema owners like you to take full control over your lighting and experience the very best in home entertainment.

How does it work? Below, the team at Pro Install AV explain everything you need to know to make the most of bespoke home lighting control.

Bias lighting has long served as the foundation of any professional AV room, making a remarkable difference in the contrast performance.

The term refers to a simple process of placing sympathetic illumination behind the screen, creating a low-level backlight which improves the quality of your viewing experience and greatly reduces eyestrain.

The way it works is simply to explain, if not necessarily to create without expert support. By adding a backlight which is less bright than the screen itself, and typically at no more than 6,500 degrees Kelvin, you benefit from the kind of colour grading standard employed by professional AV rooms and multiplex cinemas.

If you’ve invested in an LED-lit LCD screen for your media room, you could really benefit from a dimming lighting solution with bias lighting features. Without it, you’re likely to find that -once the main lights are switched off- the LEDs in the screen diminish colour quality, leaving you with a contrast that is far lower than what your screen is actually capable of with sufficient back lighting in place.

At Pro Install AV, we recommend home cinema lighting solutions from Lutron and Control4, as these are both fully compatible with the majority of LED screens. For wall-mounted screens where adding a complete behind-screen solution may prove difficult, simple LED strip lights can be installed to achieve the same result.

Bias lighting may serve as the core of your home cinema lighting system but it’s when we move on to the rest of your illuminations that you really start to enjoy creating a solution that is as unique as your media room.

Along with the innovative Hue LED lighting system from Philips, we again recommend Lutron intelligent lighting control systems for their flexibility and sheer wealth of customisable features.

Thanks to Lutron’s highly intuitive user-interface, you can take complete control over every single bulb in your media room, tailoring the intensity, timing, colours, and even the number of bulbs illuminated at any one time in order to create the perfect ambiance for any occasion.

Just imagine, warm, delicate reds lightly glowing for that romantic movie night with a loved one, or an eerie scene that sets the perfect haunting tone for a horror movie marathon. To borrow an old cliche, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

You’ll even enjoy the freedom to choose how you use the control panel itself, with the option access it either as a digital app for Windows, Apple iOS, and Android devices, an ergonomically designed remote control, or in-wall touch screen panel, designed to complement the decor of your home cinema room.

If the impressive number of customisable features that come with an LED lighting control system still aren’t enough for you, you might want to consider fibre optics.

Responsible for creating the ‘blanket of stars’ effect adorned by ceilings in high brow theatres and cinema complexes, fibre optics offer unparalleled flexibility to create truly stunning lighting scenes in any home cinema space.

Whilst Lutron do boast a number of fibre-optic lighting solutions, it’s Starscape who lead the charge for variety and affordability.

A popular choice among Pro Install AV customers, the company’s Orion package includes 120 fibre optic lights, powered by an LED light source, with ‘twinkle wheel’ to create beautiful illumination effects, and all the necessary hardware.

Whilst these may not be the simplest to install, our professional home cinema lighting specialists are always on hand to take the hassle and complications out of transforming your media room into a starlit haven.

Whilst we’ve made much of Lutron’s industry-leading lighting solutions, LED-based options from home automation specialists are also worth considering for anyone serious about making the most of their home cinema space.

The company’s range of innovative dimmable light fittings are ideal for homeowners already operating a Crestron home automation system. The fittings, which come with an estimated longevity of 70,000 hours, offer the kind of output akin to a traditional halogen bulb, and can be effortlessly integrated into a larger home cinema installation.

A popular alternative to Crestron, home automation specialists Control4 offer their own dimming lighting solutions which are particularly effective at combining lighting control with home energy management and security.

Control4’s Wireless Adaptive Phase Dimmer can be integrated with both incandescent and halogen lights, as well as LED-based systems, fluorescents, and other lighting sources. For the ultimate in customisation, the LED-backlit buttons on your bespoke control panel can be custom engraved, offering the perfect combination of practicality and extravagance.

For new developments or full remodelling jobs, integrating a new smart lighting solution is often as simple as hiring an expert to design and install a brand new system from scratch.

That may be all well and good, but what about those properties where a home cinema room already exists, and exists exactly to the owner’s liking. How then do you integrate a full lighting control solution without spoiling the aesthetic of said media room and re-writing the whole thing?

The answer lies in wireless lighting control .

Using systems such as Lutron’s Maestro Wireless Lighting System, products from Crestron’s infiNET EX range, or Control4’s wireless smart lighting solutions, your smart home specialists at Pro Install AV can retrofit state-of-the-art lighting control into your home without the need for rewiring or remodelling.

For new developments or full remodelling jobs, integrating a new smart lighting solution is often as simple as hiring an expert to design and install a brand new system from scratch.

That may be all well and good, but what about those properties where a home cinema room already exists, and exists exactly to the owner’s liking. How then do you integrate a full lighting control solution without spoiling the aesthetic of said media room and re-writing the whole thing?

The answer lies in wireless lighting control .

Using systems such as Lutron’s Maestro Wireless Lighting System, products from Crestron’s infiNET EX range, or Control4’s wireless smart lighting solutions, your smart home specialists at Pro Install AV can retro-fit state-of-the-art lighting control into your home without the need for rewiring or remodelling.