Home Theatre Curtains

Curtains provide two vital functions in a home theatre.  Firstly they need to keep out the light so the picture is much clearer and more vibrant and secondly the acoustic qualities of a curtain play a vital roll in setting up your home theatre.  The purpose of curtains acoustically is to absorb the sound so that it does not reverberate around the room.  Think of them as giant sponges soaking up the sound.

What to use
I recommend heavy textured fabrics and velvet type fabrics in dark colours.  What we will be looking for are matt fabrics - those with no shine or lustre so that light is not relected by the fabric.  Plain fabrics are usually used so that any movie posters or memorabilia will look good and not be in competition with the curtains.

All curtains must be blockout lined to keep out the light - this also helps with the acoustics.  A pelmet or closed in valance would usually be fitted directly below the conrnice and the curtains hung as close as possible to the underside of the pelmet.  This is done to minimise as much light as possible from entering the room between the top of the track and the underside of the pelmet.  The pelmet can be lined in black fabric to further reduce light from seeping into your home theatre.

Your curtains must be full length down to the floor.  It is best to extend the curtains over the walls thirty to forty centimetres so that when the curtains are open the curtains stack back over the walls.  This will allow more natural light into the room when you are not viewing movies.  The curtain track should be cord operated or mortorised so that the curtain overlap in the centre to exclude as much light as possible.  In addition the curtains must extend around the end of the track and return to the wall thus excluding even more light.

Purpose built home theatre rooms have no windows.  They are almost always very "hard" rooms where sound bounces around the room.  It is therefore essential to cover the rear wall with curtains and hang two or three panels of fabric down the side walls to absorb the reverberating sound.  In this instance pelmets are not needed except for perhaps cosmetic reasons.

After care - your curtains should be vacuumed once a year in most circumstances they will require no further care.