Home Theater Overcomes Low Ceiling
By Arlen Schweiger
Where do you hang a projector when the ceiling is just 7 feet high?

Who wants to get out of their comfy theater chair and bump their head on a projector? Especially a five-figure projector with some pretty sharp corners. Ouch.

The challenge in turning this unfinished basement, with a mere 7-foot-high ceiling, into a high-performance home theater hinged largely on projector placement. To complicate matters, the homeowner had selected a Runco model whose throw distance from the back wall—the next obvious placement option—wouldn’t jive with the room’s 17-foot length and plans for a 110-inch screen, according to Ross Anderson, the project manager for custom installation firm Electronics Design Group (EDG) of Piscataway, N.J.



“The main challenge of this room was its unconventional size,” Anderson says. “This complicated the projector placement and the audio engineering process. No projector could be fastened to the ceiling, due to the extremely low height. So a floor-mounted cabinet was selected as the most effective option.”

But thanks to some interior designer intervention, as well as a new Runco model featuring a greater throw distance, rear-wall placement was finally an option. No floor cabinet was required, the potential for head injuries was eliminated, and the upgraded projector produced a better HD picture.

EDG constructed a separate enclosure to house the projector, a Runco VX-22d, on the back wall. This served to enhance the theater’s clean and contemporary look.

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