How do make sure a home theater room fits into your Mediterranean-style house? Well, one way is to construct an adjacent alley that houses a 500-bottle wine cooler—sipping vino while you watch movies certainly provides a taste of southern Europe.

Aside from the wine bottles, though, Troy Templeton’s home theater evokes Mediterranean beauty through the work of system designer and installer Sound Components of Coral Gables, FL, and Miami-based home theater consultant Tony Abinader, whose rich color, fabric and wood scheme added the perfect finishing touch.

Burgundy drapery and carpeting contrast with toast-toned chairs and woodwork as the room’s main colors to give the room a vibrant look that does not overwhelm.

“Troy liked the traditional look, and the function he wanted was for the theater to be the main focus of his home to entertain his family, his kids and his kids’ friends,” says Abinader, who runs Abinader Home Theaters. “He wanted this to be the room he spends most of his time in and have it go with the flow of the house but brought to the level of a dedicated home theater with all the bells and whistles.”

The room itself is broken into two areas: the actual theater and a “work” area, separated by the alley and its wine cooler, mini kitchen, candy counter, coffee machine, DVD/CD libraries and electronics equipment rack. The room includes three levels of seating, with Bass Industries theater chairs in the first two rows and a row of stools behind a granite-top bar on the upper level. 

To make the video even more multipurpose, Sound Components installed two options for the Templetons: a 73-inch Mitsubishi rear-projection set for viewing in a lit room and a 110-inch dropdown Stewart Filmscreen for darker conditions. A Marantz DLP projector fills the screen with its bright images.

“The Marantz is an excellent-performing projector, and it was really crucial to have it built into the cabinetry in the back of the room,” says Sound Components’ Mark Goldman. “Marantz had a long-throw lens option that at the time most companies in the price category didn’t have.”

Since the job was a referral from loudspeaker manufacturer Definitive Technology, and because Templeton is chairman of the board of Definitive’s parent company, Directed Electronics, the brand audio was obvious. The type of speaker system was still up for discussion as the project began, however.

“Mr. Templeton was really active in the performance of the room and his expectations for it,” Goldman says. “The original specs included floorstanding speakers, but once we saw the layout of how they wanted the room to look, we switched to C/L/R3000 [center, left, right channel] speakers so we could fit them into the space requirements. There are reference subs below the left and right speakers and four in-wall subs built into the back area. We wanted performance and output and effortlessness, and the only way to do that is to move a lot of air.”

Goldman says Definitive Technology president Sandy Gross consulted with Templeton in selecting the most appropriate speaker system for the room. Six Definitive BPVX surround speakers line the side and back walls. The reference subwoofers are up front, with the other four subs in the wall in front of the bar.

“This is a great-looking, great-sounding room,” Goldman says. “It’s gorgeous when you walk in.”

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Arlen Schweiger - Managing editor of Electronic House Magazine

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