Room challenges make for an innovative design in this dream home theater, which sounds as good as it looks.

How to fit 10 seats in a small room and still get amazing sound.

Although it took a total of two years and six months of hard work, an equity line is what really helped me finish my theater. Home Theater magazine, Audio Video Interiors, and the Internet were my main sources of information. The room's dimensions are 13.5 by 19 by 8.33 feet, with a closet in the rear that houses the component rack. I gutted the room to the studs, even the ceiling, and installed a dedicated power circuit for audio, video, and lighting. I ran all the wiring for low voltage in the crawl space and for high voltage in the attic. Some crossing was unavoidable, but, at 90-degree angles, I've had no problems. To begin color selection, I started with the ceiling. I simulated the night sky with Ralph Lauren flat paint in magistrate black. I took a paint chip with me to the garment district in L.A. and found curtain fabric. With those colors to work with, I picked out the wall and trim paint and the carpet to match. I already had the black leather furniture.

19 designers, 19 rooms, 1 installer.

Our home theater started out as an unfinished basement room with dimensions of 14 by 18 by 9 feet. The room is rectangular, with three doors and no windows. Audio problems are inherently more difficult to solve than video problems. Fortunately, the room dimensions are friendly to acoustic resonances. Since the theater would be right under the great room of the house, the main goal was to decouple the theater from the rest of the house as best as possible.

I've always loved going to the movies. Most of my childhood Saturday mornings were spent at the Palace Theater in Winchester, Virginia, where I could watch two films, cartoons, a newsreel, a short, and coming attractions—all for a quarter. About three years ago, I was surfing eBay and ran across a listing for a movie poster from the 1956 horror film The Mole People. I became obsessed with that poster and soon found myself in a fierce bidding war. Later, I realized what was really going on. The Mole People poster had rekindled those childhood memories, and I somehow wanted to go back in time and relive those special Saturdays. That's when I decided to design and build an ornate 1950s style home theater.