Save Your Decor — Hide Your Media Stuff

Technology can certainly seem out of place in a traditional home if it's too front and center. But thanks to innovations in built-in and wireless technology, you can have a home that feels as traditional as you could possibly want, yet still enjoy music and video anywhere and anytime you want it.

Adding a great A/V (audio/video) solution to your home, like most major improvements, is something that can be simple or a really big project. It's up to you how far you want to take it, whether it's hiding your electronics, installing whole-house audio or completely wiring your house for the digital age.

Want to hide that cable box, DVR and Blu-Ray player? Put them in a cabinet or closet (with a little ventilation, please) and take advantage of programmable radio frequency (RF) remotes. By using radio waves, an RF remote can talk to its hub right through walls, letting you hide all those black boxes and their wires.


Want to hide that TV? Just put it behind a mirror. Here a flat-panel display is hidden behind an electronically controlled mirror (sometimes called a dielectric mirror), with the TV elements recessed into the wall. A remote control changes the mirror from reflective to clear so you don't have a big black rectangle on your wall whenever you're not watching TV.

Companies like Seura, Hidden Television and Frame My TV have mirror options for existing TVs or integrated TV mirrors.


Your home theater doesn't need obtrusive speakers in the walls, on the shelves or on your prized historic built-ins; here a mirror-covered TV is paired with ceiling-mounted speakers.

Many ceiling-mounted speakers come with "steerable" tweeters so that you can aim the sound at the main seating location in the room — like the sofa across from the TV. That way the surround sound really can surround the movie watchers.


As an alternative, you can recess a flat-panel TV into the wall above a fireplace and cover it with decorative doors or even a hinged painting.


This an example of a hinged and motorized painting over a recessed TV. When you're not watching, you can leave your room decorated with the furniture and art you love. When you're ready to watch, the art can respectfully step aside at the push of a button.


Another nifty trend in TV mirror tech is embedding a thin liquid crystal display (LCD) behind a mirror. Most often used in bathrooms, these TVs can remain completely hidden when they're off, but just switch them on and you can catch up on the news or weather while you get ready in the morning.

How to get it done. If you're doing a major remodel or building new, your general contractor can easily do the wiring and construction as part of the overall work. To install the TV, however, you should hire a media installation professional unless you're pretty darned handy.


Set Up Audio Zones

On the audio side of hidden A/V tech, built-in speakers can almost invisibly add music throughout your house. Whether you use a wireless audio system, like one from Sonos, or a prewired system, such as those from Niles or Russound, you can set up your home with separate audio zones; kids can listen to their thing upstairs while the grownups enjoy a glass of wine and chill with ambient sounds downstairs.

Particularly nice is that you can control the volume, link multiple rooms with the same music or allow people in different spaces to listen to different sources. It's a high-tech system that doesn't impede on your traditional interiors.

Here you can see how ceiling speakers are used in the kitchen, adjacent dining room and adjacent family room. Since no walls divide these spaces, all three rooms are connected in one unified audio zone.


This is what a typical A/V closet might have in it. There's a variety of equipment, including an A/V amplifier, a Blu-ray player and several Sonos ZonePlayers. Each of those silver boxes sends a streaming audio signal to a zone made up of a unique set of speakers — perhaps the garden or the kitchen or the open dining and living room area. This way you don't have bulky A/V equipment sharing space with precious antiques and other furnishings.

The white box bridges the Sonos network to a home theater system so that it can be its own audio zone when the TV is off.


Logitech Harmony Ultimate Remote Control - $349.99 » This new remote from Logitech uses RF instead of infrared (IR) light to communicate to a little hub that can be placed in a closed room, closet or cabinet to control your equipment. It talks to a little black puck called a hub, which sits wherever your equipment is.

The hub has an IR "blaster" that sends the right IR remote control signals to control each of your devices — cable boxes, DVRs, VCRs, Blu-ray players etc.; you just program the remote on the web by selecting the models of each of the devices you own.

This lets you hide all your A/V equipment, freeing you to leave your decor as technology free as you want it to be.


Sonos Play3 - $299 » Wireless audio equipment like that from Sonos lets you add whole-house audio without cutting open your ceilings to add built-in speakers. The company's wireless speakers, like the Play 3 shown here, plug into a power outlet and speak to your audio source (PC, Mac, Internet radio, Rdio, Pandora, Spotify etc.) over your Wi-Fi network. You can add them throughout the house and link them all up or set them up as separate audio zones that can each have their own audio source.

You control the speakers from an app on your iOS or Android device to choose which speaker plays what music, adjust volumes etc.

How to get it done. The setup for a system like this is so simple, you can do it on your own, right out of the box.


Wiring the Whole Shebang

If you really want to go the whole nine yards and wire a house for audio, home theater systems and the like, you really need to be able to access the areas inside the ceiling or walls. In this room ceiling speakers are tucked into the recesses of the box-beam ceiling and just become part of the ceiling pattern.

New ceiling speakers can be added from above if you have an attic space over the ceiling in question, but if it's a ceiling between floors, it's best to install the wiring when the whole ceiling is open, either during new construction or a major remodel. Wireless has come a long way, but built-in speakers still require wiring for signals, and they get their power from amplifiers somewhere else in the house.

More and more A/V amplifiers, streaming video, streaming audio, Blu-ray players and TVs have built-in Wi-Fi that lets you control them via your Apple or Android devices via apps, so it's much easier to add new technology today than it was just a couple of years ago. But if you have the opportunity to wire speakers into your house when it's under construction, just do it. The wiring isn't that expensive, and it's hard to do later.

How to get it done. If you're prewiring a home project for audio and video, you'll want to hire a media installation professional and have him or her coordinate with your contractor. This way speaker mounts, wires, controls and TVs will all get the structural and electrical support they need.


Kohler Moxie 2.0 gpm Single-Function Showerhead With Wireless Speaker - $199 » Don't like ceiling speakers in the bathroom? Don't have room for a speaker on a shelf? This water-efficient showerhead from Kohler has a speaker built into it.

More: 3 Shower Sound Systems That Beat Your Clunky Old Radio

URL: Save Your Decor — Hide Your Media Stuff http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-21193.html