Where to Put the TV When the Wall Won't Work
See the 3 Things You'll Need to Float Your TV Away From the Wall
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It can be a challenge to find the right spot for the television in today's open-plan homes, lofts, and rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows. In these cases, putting the TV against a wall can mean your seating will have its back to the rest of the room. Or it can mean you have big problems deciding whether to situate furniture to face the TV or face the view.
What if you could just get away from the wall and place your TV out in the middle of the room? Well you can! There are just a few essential elements to doing this successfully and having it look like it was meant to be.
What if you could just get away from the wall and place your TV out in the middle of the room? Well you can! There are just a few essential elements to doing this successfully and having it look like it was meant to be.
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| Here are the three essential elements to float your TV away from the wall.
1. Hide the back of the TV with cabinetry. 2. Place all your components inside the cabinet. 3. Use a power strip inside the cabinet so all cables and cords are contained inside the cabinet. You will then only need to deal with a single power cord emerging from the cabinet. The cabinet in this photo fits the bill. Beautiful on all sides and plenty of room for components, cables, a power strip and cords. By keeping it no taller than is necessary it defines the TV and dining areas without dividing the room. Tip: Floor-mounted electrical outlets are your friend. If you are installing a new outlet, place it right under the cabinet, and allow space under the cabinet for the plugs because they will stick up from the outlet a couple inches. Create an access panel in the bottom of the cabinet so you can reach the plug. |
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| In a living room like this, with floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around, walls for the TV are hard to come by. They've built a box to house the TV which matches the cabinet below. They are close enough to a wall to possibly have a wall outlet to plug into, but with all of those windows, they may have used a floor plug. |
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| Hiding the back of the TV makes seeing it from outside no worse than seeing the backs of chairs or other furniture. Again, it is essential that your cabinet has room to house the components and their cables.
Tip: If you don't want to see all of the extra components — dvd player, cable boxes, and so on — keep the doors of the cabinet opaque. You can install a device called an "IR repeater" (pronounced "eye-are-repeater") under the TV screen for each item you need to run with a remote. The IR repeater is very tiny so you can mount a few of them under the TV screen to run multiple components. |
| A TV holder like the one in this photo hides the back of the TV and is nice looking from behind. It will not hide all of the cables, so I would recommend this type when you have just a minimum number of components. I would be tempted to place a box on the base of this that housed the components and their cables with a power strip inside. It is ideal to have no more than one power cord emerging from your cabinet.
Tip: If you cannot install a floor-mounted electrical outlet, then use the best cable cover you can get to hide the cord and make it lie flat on the floor as it runs to your wall outlet. Remember you are using a power strip inside your cabinet so you only have to hide one cord. I'll say more about this later. |
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| I realize this TV is not in the middle of a room, but it sure could be. This TV cabinet has a motorized lift inside so you can raise the TV up to watch, then ... |
... lower it so the whole thing is hidden the rest of the time. I don't know why I didn't find scads of photos of these on Houzz, because I think they are the best thing since sliced bread! You can buy the motorized lifts separately and install them in any cabinet with enough space.
Since the TV needs to descend into the cabinet, and you'll also need some room for the motor, I would use a longer cabinet so that the components can be placed to either side of the TV instead of below it.
Since the TV needs to descend into the cabinet, and you'll also need some room for the motor, I would use a longer cabinet so that the components can be placed to either side of the TV instead of below it.
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| People have been using motorized lifts in TV cabinets at the foot of a bed for years now. Look closely, and you can see the panel on the top of the cabinet where the TV comes up. The only difference in floating the cabinet in the main living area is that you can't hide the cord under a bed.
Hiding the cord cover: If you can't find a cord cover that matches your floor, here's an idea. Self-adhesive contact paper comes in woodgrain and a multitude of colors. Buy contact paper that matches your floor as closely as possible and use it to wrap the cable cover. If you have carpeting, the cable covers are made of fabric with Velcro strips running the length of both sides. Make one out of wool or heavy felt to match your carpet as closely as possible. I know some people don't like to see cord covers, but ask yourself what bothers you more: a cord cover, sitting with your back to the room, or facing the wall instead of the view? |
Ideabook published on Aug. 3, 2011.
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nluker -- thank you so much! The large artist easel is certainly a creative idea, but as "lynnaep" points out, there is no place to hide the components and cables.
oneroomatatimeinc -- thanks for the additional photos. I wish you had one of the ceiling mounted tv in its lowered position. I thought about including that in this ideabook, but there simply were no photos to support it. Rats!
joiede -- Yes, the thin screens are a real blessing. Recently saw very thin cabinets that hold the components in a vertical position instead of their usual horizontal orientation. The bonus is that the media cabinet is no thicker than about 10 inches. Amazing!
pingping -- actually no, your tv will not overheat as shown in photo #2. Televisions are mounted inside niches all the time that fit closely around the tv and it works very well. The components in the bottom of the cabinet are the ones that need extra space to keep from getting too warm. The component area needs to be roomy, and if you can use doors or sides that have pierced grids or screens allowing more air circulation, so much the better.
www.seura.com
One of my clients put his components in the laundry room - at least 20' from the TV & behind the seating area.
http://kitchendesignbyjoanne.com
I do know that some of these IR repeaters will handle multiple units. Just need to compare the cost based on how many items you actually do need to control. So many techie things to keep up with these days!!
'All of the equipment is located in the laundry room except the DVD player...which is located directly under the TV....for the reason you stated...we didn't want to go into the laundry room to pop a DVD in the player. All of the equipment in the laundry room is hard-wired to the TV via cabling. When the basement was under construction, they set all the wiring in the walls and ceiling and connected them to terminals - in the laundry room and by the TV - so that when we hooked up the equipment all we had to do is literally "plug it into the wall". (It was a little more complicated than that, but not much). The internet is brought into the house via Comcast, which is hardwired from the outside into the laundry room to a modem and then into a router. The router shares hardwired feeds for the various equipment we have in that room, which includes: an amplifier; Comcast DVR, AppleTV, Roku( a streaming TV service for things such as Netflix and Amazon) and Sonos which is an online internet-based consolidator of music services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM. Finally, our television channels are brought into the house via DirecTV. Again, hardwired from the satellite on the roof into the the laundry room and then to the DVR. Hope this all makes sense. The only "wireless" thing is really the single remote control, which is radio-based not line-of-sight, which means you don't have to point it at the equipment to make it work. The single remote control is used for all the equipment. A real space saver! Also, the Sonos connects wirelessly to a set of receivers in the living room and the master bedroom. '
I can't claim to totally understand all of this, but I think it's a great solution for a major remodel or new construction. Maybe not so helpful otherwise.
So here's what I'm taking away from this for floating your tv in the middle of the room:
1. The cabinet housing all of the components along with the tv is still the most simple, affordable, and easily executed way to accomplish floating the tv without seeing cables all over.
2. If you are involved in new construction, it pays to have your interior designer helping you from the start so you can decide best furniture placement. That way, if you want to put the tv anywhere other than on a wall -- you can get that hardwiring in before drywall goes up and foundations are laid.
3. If you are working with a home that isn't new and you have a big crawl space below your tv room, you can put all of those components wherever you please as long as it can all be reached via cable -- but maybe still have room in your cabinet for that dvd player. Unless we all give up dvd's & blu-ray and just go to streaming from the internet ;0)
4. It pays to do your space planning very early in the game so all of these issues can be thought of. That way if you have to install wiring, you don't paint your room or put up wallpaper, only to realize that now you need to cut open walls to install wiring.