A villa in Dubai Hills: a room built inside the room, with sound for both rows
A basement room in a Dubai Hills villa under renovation. To keep a cinema's sound out of the rest of the house, we built a second room inside it: floating walls and ceiling of 15 mm Gyproc SoundBloc on Knauf 70 mm framing.
The room
A basement room in an already-built villa under renovation, 9 × 6.5 m. The brief: two rows of seating, a 150-inch screen and Dolby Atmos, without the film being heard in the rest of the house.
Designed first
We designed the room before building it: a full room-in-room shell, speaker positions that cover both rows, the riser and the screen wall. The left, centre and right speakers are built into the front wall behind an acoustically transparent screen.
Built by our own team
Our team built a room inside the room: floating walls and ceiling of 15 mm Gyproc SoundBloc on Knauf 70 mm framing, with insulation in the cavities. The seating riser is filled with fibreglass, so it also works as a bass trap. About 34 m² of fabric-wrapped absorber panels, in 25 mm and 50 mm cores, control the reflections, and cinema carpet with underlay finishes the floor.
The finished room
Two LED-lit dropped-ceiling frames and two vertical wall reveals outline the room. The Dolby Atmos 7.2.6 layout uses Klipsch in-wall speakers at the front and sides and six Klipsch in-ceiling speakers overhead, with two 12-inch subwoofers. The side surrounds are doubled, one set per row, so both rows hear the surround effects in the right place. A 4K projector fills the 150-inch Edge Sound Max 4K acoustically transparent screen. Every speaker was measured and tuned in the finished room, with the AC running.
Who did what
Our scope: we built the shell and provided the acoustics, the carpet, the screen, the projector, the speakers, the AV receiver and the amplifiers. The room has custom-built seating, purchased by the owner.
The specs
- Location
- Dubai Hills, Dubai (basement room, villa under renovation)
- Room
- 9 × 6.5 m (about 58 m²)
- Seating
- Two rows of custom-built seating, purchased by the owner; the back row on a bass-trap riser
- Screen
- 150-inch, acoustically transparent (Edge Sound Max 4K AT)
- Projector
- 4K projector
- Sound
- Dolby Atmos 7.2.6 with doubled side surrounds: Klipsch in-wall screen and surround speakers, six Klipsch in-ceiling speakers, two 12-inch subwoofers, a 13-channel Atmos AV receiver plus a 5-channel amplifier
- Isolation
- Room-in-room: floating walls and ceiling, 15 mm Gyproc SoundBloc on Knauf 70 mm framing
- Acoustics
- About 34 m² of fabric-wrapped absorbers (25 mm and 50 mm), bass-trap riser, cinema carpet with underlay
- Lighting
- Two LED dropped-ceiling frames and two vertical LED wall reveals
- By the owner
- Custom-built seating
Planning a room like this?
Most home cinemas are bought, not designed. We design yours before it's built, so it's right from every seat.
Book your free Design Session▶ Watch the 2-minute video