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While looking for Christmas gift ideas for the kids to share, my partner came up with the idea of creating a DIY home cinema for holding family movie nights at home.
Obviously we now need to get them something else because we gave in and presented it to the kids in the third week of November (we are very weak, and the weather was particularly rubbish) but it went really well. They all absolutely loved it, and I’m sure we’ll be getting a lot more use out the set up going forward which all in all cost us about the equivalent of three trips to the cinema (or perhaps just the one if you include overpriced popcorn and snacks).
I thought I’d share the details of our DIY movie night at home in case you’re struggling for ideas this Christmas, as it really was a hit and could be especially handy during that bit between Christmas and New year (‘gooch week’, I believe it’s called).
Making a home cinema for a family movie night at home: The essentials
Below I’ve listed everything we bought for our family movie night at home, and provided handy links in case you want to have a go yourself.
Projector and screen
The projector that we bought was £100 at the time but is (typically) now available for less; either way it is genuinely surprisingly good for the price. It can connect to home WiFi and Bluetooth speakers etc, and has ports so you can plug in almost anything (TV box/fire stick, games console, mobile phone, tablet, USB stick, speakers, external hard drive, DVD player, laptop etc).
We bought an Amazon Fire TV Stick which plugs into the HDMI port, and makes it easy to stream films and TV shows from Disney, Netflix, Prime, iPlayer etc. ‘Lite’ Amazon Fire TV Sticks are currently down to £21.99 at the time of writing; you will only need a Lite stick as you can’t use volume and on/off controls anyway.
Can’t find what you want? To stream content from other countries, look into the best VPN for Netflix or other streaming services.
You can buy a pull-down projector screen, or you can project straight onto a clear plain wall in a dark room if you have the space. We have a pretty large wall at the back of the room, so we turned one sofa around to create rows (which was exciting in itself to the children although they didn’t appreciate the smooching in the back…) and even though we have a door in the way, once the projector was going you hardly noticed it was there.
In terms of positioning the projector, we used a standard photography tripod which screws into the bottom, but it’s also fine on top of a table, cupboard or unit, and can be moved about easily as it’s really light. It was set up 4.5m away and the ‘screen’ was basically the same size as a 156″ TV, or 3.5m wide. That’s pretty big. Certainly big enough for a movie night at home.
It can project clearly up to 200 inches, if you have the space to position it 5.5m away. If your room is smaller then it’ll still work; at 3m away the screen will be around 100″ which is still a lot bigger than most TVs.
Sound bar
The sound that comes out of the projector is a little tinny; I’m not sure you could expect much more for the price though! To make it sound as good as it looked, we bought a Majority sound bar priced at a very reasonable £59.95.
The sound is great quality for the price; the sound bar connects via Bluetooth and completely makes the cinema experience – you can place it underneath the screen so the sound isn’t coming from the back of the room.
Popcorn maker
No family movie night at home would be complete without popcorn and, because he doesn’t do anything by halves, my partner also got a fancy VonShef popcorn machine.
I admit there’s a special knack to holding the bowl so that the popcorn doesn’t explode all over the kitchen (although if you have a dog, there won’t be any mess either way), but kids will really enjoy watching it in action and it’s much healthier – not to mention cheaper! – than buying pre-popped popcorn. You can buy a 1 litre tub of kernels for under £9 and add your own salt or sugar.
The movie
Obviously you need to decide on a film for movie night which everyone in the family will enjoy, and you know better than I what that might be. However when using a projector, something brightly coloured like a Disney or Pixar animation will work better on a wall than something with lots of dark colours as the blacks in the film will only be as dark as whatever they’re projected on to.
We decided on Elemental for the first family movie night at home.
We even printed off tickets; Canva have a bunch of free templates you can use.
The children had seen it before – I’m not sure there’s much on Disney+ they haven’t seen at this point – but they absolutely loved watching it on the big screen. They want to watch all TV on the movie screen now, although the plan is to save it for special occasions so it remains exciting!
Warning: Definitely do not use such a set up for watching television programs such as I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Having Nigel Farage beamed into your house at that size could have a detrimental effect on your future libido.