I agree about the crown, especially if you paint it white. We do have white baseboards however but since they are lower in your sight line, it's not a distraction. We painted our ceilings the same color as the walls. (Restoration Hardware Cappuccino) and dh wants to go even darker on the ceiling now and do it in the Flax color. I am not familiar with Treasure Isle but I would paint the ceiling and walls the same. Here's ours, we just got new JCPenney black velvet drapes last week. ;c)

Lindybarts, thank you. I love the curtains and the color. It's interesting that your DH thinks that the ceiling should be darker. My DS thinks that if we use the color combination of Treasure Isle and Cassiopeia that the darker color, Treasure Isle, should be on the ceiling because he's concerned about a light ceiling causing reflections. Maybe this is a guy thing.

Since I'm seriously design challenged I'm afraid to make a final decision. Any other opinions on how to pull this all together?

We have a basement theater room, too, but decided not to do the screen w/ projector (got a 70-inch Sony instead) so I could read while hubby watched TV (and I knew very low lighting is critical to projectors/screens). We used SW Svelte Sage (pretty dark in a windowless room) and the same ceiling color as the rest of the basement, which is light. If I'd had your type of setup, I'd have done a darker-than-walls ceiling.

I saw a wonderful home theater setup during a Showcase of Homes just before we did ours--they had a black ceiling. They also used black felt and poked some holes in it, pulling through the little lights from strands of Christmas tree lights (clear) mounted on the ceiling for some accent lighting--very creative and cute!

Love your theater curtains, Lindy!

Back to your question....I don't think I'd use crown molding in that room because of the stark contrast between such dark colors. Like Lindy says, doesn't seem as distracting on the floor where you usually expect it. Or, just paint it the same as the wall if you need to put it up.

Tracey

Sounds like your DS has a pretty good handle on this. If you Google "Home Theatre" images, you can get some more ideas that way.

almagh, can't see your picture. I love to see media rooms.

I will try again.

{{!gwi}}

Yay, now I can see it! Wow! LOVE the red! Very theatrical!

Thanks for all the help. I'm adjusting my mind to the idea of a really dark ceiling and trying to imagine how the room will look when the room isn't being used as a "theater". I probably should have said in my original post that this our general rec room and will probably also act as the grandchildrens' "dorm" at some point. This room also has two windows and a glass door to a porch. I was planning on using white plantation shutters in the rest of the house and I don't think the white plantation shutters will work well for light control. Since these windows will be very visible from the street do you think it's important to keep the window treatments uniform or can I do something different on these windows from the rest of the house? I'm definitely way out of my comfort zone on this and any help will be appreciated.

We have Plantation shutters on the front of our house and they block out quite a bit of light. More than the wood blinds that we have in the media room actually so I think you would be okay to use those. The optimum of course would be thick functioning drapes to block out the most light. But we find the blinds do enough to make viewing daytime sporting events just fine. At night is when we are usually watching a movie anyway. We are thinking about adding drapes to those windows in the future though.

I would use the darker colour on the walls and the lighter colour for the ceiling, and a bit lighter tone of the ceiling colour for the crown and the plantation shutters. If this is to be a multi-purpose room you don't want it as dark as a theater. We have a multipurpose theater/game room in our basement. I just cannot stand a really dark room, so we had the walls painted BM Golden Straw. However, we have NO natural light---this is an interior basement room that we finished for this purpose, so when the door is closed and the lights are of, there is NO light and the light colours are not at all distracting.

We put a gas fireplace underneath the screen, which was our biggest problem (insulation, heat, electricals, etc.) but everything seems to work. :)

Thanks for all the great suggestions. The final decision on this rests with the young folks and they want that dark ceiling so I am taking a deep breath and learning to love new things. The walls will be a lighter shade of the same color but still dark and they absolutely don't want white trim. Do you think a shade intermediate between the walls and the ceiling would be okay or do you think the trim could be the same color as the ceiling or walls? Also they love the idea of the heavy working curtains so maybe we'll do wood blinds on these windows with curtains over them. What do you think?

Well since that's what I have (getting the drapes soon) I'm going to say it's a great idea! LOL! As for the dark ceiling, since you have so much light in there from your door and windows you can open up the blinds when you're not watching a movie and it will be just fine. You really do need the darker ceiling for the movies! Your kids sound like they know exactly what they're doing. ;c)

Here's what the wood blinds look like in our room. We hope to get some thick drapes on our next bonus check! tee hee

Lindy, your media room is a true inspiration. Everything looks great and I can almost picture our sea green room with the white blinds making it a real room that converts to a theater when the curtains close. Thanks for the help.