Fabric walls for home cinema

• Because they look great, and incredibly cinematic. Fabric walls work equally well for all three main styles of home cinema - traditional, contemporary and futuristic.

• To hide stuff - speakers, acoustic treatments, LED lighting, or anything you don’t want to take out but don’t want to see either - like an old fireplace or a small window.

There’s an idea out there that fabric walls themselves are acoustic treatments, but they’re not. If you choose the wrong fabric, it’ll probably do the wrong things - but really it’s about concealing the other elements and creating a ‘real cinema’ look and feel.

In an existing room, it also lets you achieve a really lovely finish without plasterers or decorators.

The first thing we have to do is build forward from the walls - how much depends on speaker depth, the thickness of acoustic treatment we want to use, and how much space we have. It’s also a great way to level out uneven walls in an older building

We usually use dedicated framing systems - made from wood or metal - to create a perfect flat surface for the track.

A skilled carpenter or general builder can probably fit fabric track, provided they have a (very) good mitre saw and multi-tooth blade, and can measure and cut accurately.

For build projects we’re happy to offer on-site support or in-store training for track fitting. Complicated angles and corners will take longer.

Finally, the fabric itself is fitted into the track using specialist tools - we have all of these, and it’s usual for us or one of our install partners to fit the fabric. It takes 1-2 hours per rectangular panel, regardless of size, so intricate designs with smaller panels and complicated angles take longer to fit. A larger room of moderate complexity could take several days.

The build or project site area needs to be clean and dust-free before we can start fitting fabric - this is critical. Project managers, please note! We really mean dust free!

The fabrics we prefer - from Camira Fabrics or Cinema Build Systems - are 1700mm wide and sold by the metre. A good quality, natural, open-weave fabric should be forgiving to fit and have minimal impact on the sound. We have plenty of samples in our showroom to help you choose.

Fabric track comes in standard lengths of 2.4m in ‘flat’, ‘V’ and ‘bevel’ variations, in boxes of 20 lengths. For our Bristol showroom, which is 4.5 x 5m and has quite a complicated design, we used 145m.

*NB priced per perimeter metre

Halo Frame is a dedicated aluminium framing system. It costs £100 per perimeter metre, and has both LED profile and fabric track built-in.

So for example, a Halo panel 1m wide and 2.5m tall uses (1+1+2.5+2.5) 7m in length, and will cost £700.

Labour depends on the size of the room, the design detail, and any complications. Features such as light switches/keypads, power sockets, corners, windows and doors all add complexity and hence time.

We can build you a better home cinema - with or without fabric walls, but probably with.