This article is part of our Home Theater Design Series that covers virtually everything about designing a home theater.
Custom painting your speaker grilles allows you to virtually hide your speakers in plain sight - they’ll blend in with your walls, ceiling, or cabinet for a seamless visual appeal. If you’re reasonably handy, this do-it-yourself guide will walk you through how to custom paint your in-wall or in-ceiling speakers.
Before painting your in-wall or in-ceiling speakers, there are a few things we would recommend you have on hand:
If your speaker contains a scrim cloth, gently remove the cloth from the backside of the grille before painting.
Use high-quality spray paint and apply several thin coats of paint instead of one heavy coat. Ensure that the grille perforations remain free of paint — filling them with paint will diminish the speaker's sound quality. This will help prevent the perforations in the grille from being clogged with paint. If any perforations are plugged, use compressed air to blow the paint out of the perforations.
Expert Advice: If you find any grille perforations that are plugged with paint after the paint has dried, carefully use a straight pin, sewing needle, or toothpick to remove the paint.
Be careful not to overcoat the sides of your grills as many are a very tight fit. You will want to paint both sides of your speaker grilles to be sure you get along the insides of the perforations.
Depending on the kind of speaker you’re painting, you may need to also paint the frame that holds the baffle. Most brands provide a paint mask to protect the speaker and cavity while painting. You can paint the frame flange with spray paint or with a conventional can of paint & paintbrush. Painting without using the paint mask risks contamination of the internal connection terminals or the grille attachment magnets. Be careful again to keep the paint thin on the sides so your speaker grills will be able to pop in.
Check out our full DIY guide on how to install in-wall and in-ceiling speakers for your home theater or media room. This video walks you through a live installation of Bowers & Wilkins in-wall & in-ceiling speakers for a home theater.
At Audio Advice, we've been designing and installing high-performance home theaters & smart home systems for our customers in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, and surrounding areas for decades. In fact, we've delivered more custom theaters than anyone in the Southeast! We are now offering Home Theater Design no matter where you live in the United States! If you are interested in a custom home theater or upgrading your current system, give us a call 888.899.8776, chat with us, or stop by our Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina showrooms. We can't wait to help you build your ultimate home theater!
Enter your room dimensions, audio, and video preferences while it designs your theater in real-time. Receive optimal screen size, seating locations, speaker locations, and receive precise measurements for your room layout. Work with our system designers via chat, email, phone, or in-store for expert advice, product selections, and more.
If you are in the market for a new home theater system or improving part (or all) of the one you already own, you’ve probably figured out that the options can be more confusing than advanced algebra! Explore our guide to understand the available options and how they might work or not work in your particular situation. If you need help customizing a solution for your space, reach out - we're happy to help!
There are so many great options when it comes to choosing sources for your home theater or media room that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Should you use a streaming device like an Apple TV 4K or Roku Ultra? Do you still need a cable box or Blu-ray Player? Do you want the very best option with a Kaleidescape? We answer all these questions and m...
A guide on how to design your ideal home theater or media room so all your friends and family experience a beautiful picture with great surround sound. Learn about how the dimensions of your room can impact the sound, finding the ideal screen viewing height, and how to design a home theater riser so everyone has a great seat.
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If you’re building a home theater or media room, a common forgotten element is planning for your electrical needs. Audio Advice shares their best practices so you can have a powerful entertainment system!
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A guide on how to get the best sound out of your home theater room. We have some tips and tricks to greatly improve the way your home theater sounds. You’ll learn about how to use some basic things around the house to enhance your acoustics and how to choose aftermarket acoustic treatments.
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This article is part of our home theater design series, and we will cover how to mount your front projector to your ceiling. If you are thinking about a DIY home theater, mounting the screen and projector may give you some pause, but there is no need to worry. With the right knowledge and some of our tips, you will be able to install your projec...
This article is part of our home theater design series and we will cover how to mount your front projection screen. If you are thinking about a DIY home theater, mounting the screen and projector may give you some pause, but there is no need to worry. With the right knowledge and some of our tips, you will be able to install your first screen li...
For the home theater enthusiast looking to upgrade their picture in a family or media room, the choice between a large, flat panel tv and an ultra-short throw projector can be a daunting one. Watch our latest video where we dive into the pros and cons of each display!
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In this article, we will go over all the things you need to consider when trying to find the best front projection system for your home theater or family room. We have put together a pretty straightforward decision tree to help you quickly determine your ideal front projector choice!
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Learn how to choose the best size for your TV or front projection home theater system. We’ve culminated in the advice of the movie industry and our years of experience with real-world home theaters to take the guesswork out of helping you choose the perfect screen size. You’ll just need a tape measure and a calculator.
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While this is one of the most common questions we get, the answer is something pretty hard to pin down. As we’ve heard from thousands of customers over the years, a well-designed home theater room will quickly become your favorite room in the house. As with anything, the devil is in the details. Let’s take a look at what it will take to get ...
Learn about technologies and features you should look for in a new audio-video receiver for your home theater. We will make it easy to decide which features are important for your system and which ones you may not need to worry over.
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Today’s home theater receivers come with so many features, they can make your head spin. Just take a look at the specs on any brand’s website and you’ll probably see more than 50 features listed in the long list of advantages the brand is pitching you. Sure you want all of the latest and greatest, but in the end, room EQ optimization i...
Follow our home theater AV receiver setup to greatly improve the overall sound of your home theater system.
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Whether you’re researching for a future home theater installation or exploring ways to enhance your current home theater, we’ve created a series of videos to walk you through upgrades to make optimizing your setup easier — including everything you need to know, from tweaking your picture to improving the acoustics in your room. In this par...
If you are a home theater enthusiast, you are probably aware of how important a role the center channel speaker plays in a great home theater experience. Here, we will give some basic set up tips and hopefully even a couple of suggestions for experts that will help you get the most out of your center channel speaker.
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Check out our free tips on how to improve the picture performance of your home theater’s TV or front projector. We go over some simple steps that will allow you to fine-tune your picture like a pro. Whether you have a new home theater or yours has some age on it, these tips are sure to make you smile when you see the improvements.
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Imagine you are really getting into a great action movie, the spaceship lands, and all of a sudden, you hear this terrible buzzing or rattling sound coming from somewhere in your room. The effect of the movie has just been totally ruined. This tip breaks down how to find and eliminate noises your room might be making due to vents, furniture, li...
Follow along in our guide where we help explain how and give you the right tools to perfectly set lip sync in your home theater.
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This tip is designed to help you nail down the right contrast and brightness settings on your television or projector. If you have not yet watched our Top 5 Tips for improving your Home Theater video, we would suggest you watch that first as it covers all of the major items you want to adjust in order, including brightness and contrast.
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This tip is designed to help you perfectly focus your projector and is part of our Top 5 Tips For Improving Your Home Theater Video series. You can follow these steps using your projector’s pattern or we show you in this video. Make sure your projector has warmed up for at least 20 minutes before running this test.
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If you follow these tips, you can substantially improve your home theater or media room. This tip breaks down how to get the perfect sharpness settings on your television or front projector.
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Although hanging acoustic panels in a home theater or listening room is not too difficult, it does require a little thought & planning. In this video, we show you two effective methods we use here at Audio Advice that are easy for the average DIYer.
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A guide on how to design your ideal home theater or media room so all your friends and family experience a beautiful picture with great surround sound. Learn about how the dimensions of your room can impact the sound, finding the ideal screen viewing height, and how to design a home theater riser so everyone has a great seat.
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Adding a subwoofer to your home stereo system or home theater system can make a huge improvement in your sound if you know how to properly position and adjust the settings.
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As more original Dolby Atmos movies continue to come to streaming platforms, you will not want to choose upgrades for your home theater system until you watch our next video. Since you already own most of the key parts, you won’t even have to change that many components! We will cover essential tips & tricks to get great-sounding uncompre...
