Guide
What a home cinema costs in a Sydney home
Home cinema quotes vary more than almost anything else a Sydney home gets done, and not because installers disagree about price. They vary because the brief is usually underspecified, so two people quote two different jobs. Four decisions set the figure, and once they are settled the quotes converge quickly.
Worth saying at the outset that the equipment is rarely the biggest line. On the larger jobs the room and the cabling account for more than the electronics, and that inversion is what catches most people out when they budget for the gear and not for the getting it in.
One: is there building work?
This is the single largest fork. A system installed into an existing room is an AV job. A room built or converted for the purpose is a construction job with AV at the end of it, and it brings in an electrician, usually a builder, sometimes a plasterer for acoustic work and occasionally a structural question about the ceiling. The AV portion of that can be a minority of the total.
If you are pricing a cinema and the number surprised you, this is nearly always the reason. Ask which trades are in the quote before comparing it to anything.
Two: screen or projector
A large television is a single purchase with almost no installation cost beyond mounting and cabling. A projector is a projector, a screen, a mount, a throw calculation and a room dark enough to justify it, and the cabling has to reach the ceiling rather than the wall. Projector systems are not automatically dearer on hardware, but they are consistently dearer to install.
Three: how far the sound goes
Sound scales in steps rather than smoothly. A soundbar and subwoofer is one step. Five discrete speakers with an amplifier is a larger one, and the cost is as much in running cable to the surround positions as in the speakers themselves. Adding height channels for object-based audio means getting into the ceiling, which in a finished double-brick Sydney house is a different proposition to a plasterboard ceiling with a roof cavity above it.
In-wall and in-ceiling speakers look like they should cost less because nothing is visible. They cost more, because concealment is labour.
Four: are the walls open?
The same point that governs every cabled job in a house. Cable run before the plasterboard goes on is quick and invisible. The same cable afterwards has to find a path, and in a terrace or a double-brick house it sometimes cannot find one at all without a duct. If you are renovating, the cheapest cinema work you will ever buy is the cabling you put in before the walls close, even if the equipment comes years later.
What to settle before you ask anyone for a number
- Which room, and whether it is allowed to stop being a lounge. The dedicated-room question changes the figure more than any equipment choice.
- Whether the room can be made dark, because that decides projector or television and the two price differently.
- How many seats, and whether the seating can sit forward of the back wall. That is what decides whether surround speakers are worth paying for.
- Whether anything is being built or opened up, and if so when, because the cabling wants to happen at a specific point in that schedule.
Four answers turn an unquotable brief into a quotable one, and they are all things you know without needing an installer in the room.
When those are settled, the work itself is home theatre and cinema installation, quoted against the room rather than against a package.
Common questions
The ones we get asked.
- Why are two quotes for the same cinema so far apart?
- Almost always because they are not quoting the same job. One may have included the building work, the electrical and the acoustic treatment while the other priced only the equipment and its installation. Ask each to list which trades and which stages are included, and the gap usually explains itself without anyone being wrong.
- Is the equipment or the room the bigger cost?
- In an existing room, the equipment. In a purpose-built or converted room, usually the room. That reversal is the main reason budgets set from equipment prices come up short, because the construction side was never in the number.
- Can we do it in stages?
- Yes, and it is often the sensible route. The order that works is cabling first, then screen and sound, then seating and treatment later. Cable is the piece that is cheap now and expensive later, so it is the part worth bringing forward even when everything else waits.
- Does a bigger budget mean a better result?
- Up to a point, and then placement matters more than spend. A correctly positioned mid-range system in a room that has been measured beats an expensive one dropped into a room that has not. The measurement costs very little and is the step most often skipped.
What we do about it