Home Theater Ceiling Tiles

Simple installation + better acoustics = an equation that's hard to beat!

It's been a while since I installed my Ceilume Ceiling Tiles in my home theater room. I used two different tiles: Dart in the center and Stratford as a border tile - both in black. Installation was simple, the border tiles cut easily with a set of kitchen scissors. As I was about half way done with the installation, I noticed a large improvement in room acoustics. The Dart tiles work very well as acoustic diffusers by helping to eliminate harsh sound reflections in the room. When the ceiling was completed, there was a large improvement in musical clarity due to reduced sound reflection from the ceiling.

The Dart tiles are great - they even have an unexpected benefit for my home theater room. When you orient the "darts" in the pattern so they run parallel to the front wall where the movie projector shines, they work very well to reduce the light reflected from the screen to the ceiling and back to the viewer. When I began installing them directly in front of the projection screen, I oriented a few so the darts were parallel to the screen wall and a few so the darts were perpendicular to the screen wall. It only took 2 seconds with the projector on to determine which way things needed to be...

There is one drawback to these tiles with my particular configuration, though, and this may not be an issue for other people. Because the tiles are so lightweight, my subwoofer (which is not quite a "run of the mill" subwoofer) causes them to bounce around and rattle in the ceiling grid that holds them up. I tried a few remedies and the best solution that I found was to purchase several sheets of standard drywall and cut it into squares. The back of the Dart tiles has a raised lip that is perfect for accepting one square of drywall as added mass. If you cut the drywall into 23.5" by 23.5" pieces, they just fit into the lip and since the weight rests on the ceiling grid, it doesn't place any stress on the tile itself. This layer of drywall also helps to further isolate the noise upstairs from the theater room in the basement. So there you have it, a great looking, rattle free, sound diffusing, and light reflection preventing solution!

I really love the appearance and performance of my new ceiling!

- Eric