Cinema Rooms for Highland Park's Most Particular Homeowners
A theater inside a Highland Park estate is more than a room with a big screen. The houses along Beverly Drive and Lakeside Drive were built for gracious entertaining, and the cinema you build inside one should hold that same standard. We design rooms that rival commercial screening houses in image and sound — and that still feel, when the lights come up, like an intentional part of your home. Your designer chooses the fabrics. Your architect approves the lines. We make the room sing.
Older Highland Park homes carry their own acoustic personality. Plaster carries sound differently than drywall. Hardwood, tall ceilings, and large window openings throw reflections that demand precise treatment. In Preston Hollow new builds, we earn the luxury of specifying dimensions, wall construction, and HVAC isolation from the blueprint. Whether we are coaxing a 1940s Georgian library into a proper theater or designing from the ground up on Strait Lane, our ISF-certified technicians and acoustic engineers calibrate the room to your eyes, your ears, your seating. When the lights come up, the room is still unmistakably part of your home.
The Frustrations We Hear Most
- A lamp-based projector that has gone tired and gray after thousands of hours
- Speakers that were never really designed for film — dialogue you have to lean forward to catch
- Sound bleeding into bedrooms and nurseries and the rooms where someone is trying to sleep
- Daytime light washing the picture flat
- Three remotes, four sources, a startup ritual that takes longer than the previews
Who We Help in Park Cities
- You collect films and want the picture and sound to honor what the director made
- You have a formal living room or a library that nobody really uses, and you can already see what it could become
- You are building new in Preston Hollow and want a theater suite woven into the floor plan
- You watch sports the way some people watch opera, and you want stadium-scale at home with bar seating and a second screen
- You have an aging projector that has dimmed, shifted color, and lost the magic
How We Do It in Park Cities
Sitting in the Room — We come to the space and look at it the way you do — dimensions, the way light leaks in, the noise paths through the structure, where the HVAC sits. Then we talk about how you watch. Films, sports, late-night quiet, Saturday with the kids.
Shaping the Sound — We model speaker placement, subwoofer positioning, and the acoustic treatment the room needs. Equipment is chosen from Sony, Epson, Steinway Lyngdorf — selected for the room you actually have.
Working With Your Designer — Your interior designer chooses the wall fabrics, ceiling treatment, sconces, and seating. We make sure the technology disappears into their vision instead of fighting it.
Building It — Soundproofing layers, speaker mounting, projector rigging, screen install, the equipment rack. Done by our own people, with the finish quality you expect.
The Calibration — ISF video calibration. Audio tuned with measurement microphones until the frequency response is honest and the surround panning lands exactly where it should.
One Button — A single press dims the lights, lowers the shades, wakes the projector, and finds your show. No remotes. No confusion. Just the movie.
The Questions People Actually Ask.
Can a Highland Park home with plaster walls support a proper immersive surround sound theater?
Yes — though the approach differs from new construction. We reinforce ceiling mounting points for the overhead channels, decouple wall assemblies for in-wall speakers, and add isolation so the sound stays in the room and out of the bedrooms.
What is the difference between a Sony and Epson projector for a home theater?
Sony's SXRD excels in native contrast and HDR brightness, which loves a larger screen — 150 inches and up. Epson's D-ILA delivers exquisite black levels in light-controlled rooms. We recommend based on the screen, the room, and what you watch.
How do you prevent theater sound from disturbing the rest of the house?
A room within a room. Resilient channel, mass-loaded vinyl, double-layer drywall, isolated HVAC ductwork. In existing Highland Park homes we often add a secondary ceiling and decouple the shared walls, achieving real isolation without losing the room's footprint.
Do you design media rooms as well as dedicated theaters?
Often. Many Highland Park homeowners prefer a multipurpose media room over a fully blacked-out theater. We design these with ambient-light-rejecting screens, in-wall speakers that vanish into the decor, and seating that works for everyday family nights and dinner parties alike.
How long does a full Highland Park theater project take?
A media room upgrade in an existing space usually runs 3 to 5 weeks. A dedicated theater with acoustic treatment, custom finishes, and tiered seating in a new build runs 8 to 14 weeks, depending on how it dances with your general contractor's schedule.
