One of these days I will sit down when I have some time and write a nice long reply. For lights, I went with small can lights around the soffit (you could do the same along the edge of the ceiling, or even go with ones spread throughout the room). We then added 3 wall sconces (don't get those cheapo "paintable" kind. Spend $10+ more and get something with some metal, or glass, or both.

Biggest thing is getting them on dimmers... Notice, that is plural. Set up at LEAST 2 zones in the theater. In my V3.0, we had can lights throughout the room, but the half closest to the screen was on a different dimmer than the back half where we sat. Then we could eat dinner and see what we were eating, and not have lights on right above the screen (even if they were only at 25% thanks to the dimmer).

In my current space, since the wall sconces are in the back half of the theater, but the small can lights go all along the side and back walls (in the soffits), they are on their own dimmer. Then, if we are eating in the theater, I turn the can lights all the way off, and the wall sconces to about 25% and it works perfect.

Get remote controlled dimmers too. I went with two Lutron IR dimmers. Press the paddle up once and it goes to whatever pre-set lighting level you want, press it twice and it is on at 100%, press it up a third time and it is back to the pre-set dimmer level, press it down and it is off (all with a nice slow fade). On my remote I have 1 preset for eating (it is the default preset on the dimmers themselves. One I set to the sconces slightly on, and on the other dimmer it is at like 1% (as close to off as possible). Then the remote just sends the signal to put both dimmers to their preset, and it is perfect for eating. I have another preset on my remote that goes to the "eating" level, and then does a +2 on both, this is more for having a dim space, but not fully dark for when waiting for the wife and kids to come into the room.

Works great, and allows to good lighting control.

Oh, and we don't eat dinner down there THAT much, but we do use the presets a lot.

EDIT: Put at least 1 CAT6 cable drop into the room. There are some devices that can connect to the internet wirelessly, but if you want to stream video either from the internet or from a media server/computer in the house, you will want/need a wired connection. I know, you may not have plans for that now, but I didn't plan on having a HTPC in my room either when I dropped the CAT6 cables in. One all the way back to my internet connection point in my house. This was just for being able to do firmware updates originally for all of my equipment. I am glad I did, otherwise I would have had a really hard time adding it later so that I can stream my 72GB Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings, or the even larger sequels. Even smaller file size movies would choke at even high quality across wireless, and I ended up wanting exact same playback (or better) with my HTPC, so that means no compression at all.

monoprice.com will hook you up with cheap network cable. Buy longer than you need...

Last edited by nickbuol; 04/15/14 07:27 PM. Reason: Added CAT6 comments
Farewell - June 4, 2020