Under-stair rebuild
An under-stair space opened up and reframed, then finished with a reclaimed panelled pine door and tongue-and-groove to match the original hallway.
Services
Media Wall Installation
A media wall installation done properly is joinery, not a TV bracket. The screen, the cabling, the ventilation and the storage all get designed into one piece of built-in furniture that runs the width of the room.
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Joinery first
A media wall is furniture, not a fireplace surround
Most media wall installers come at it from fireplaces. You get a panelled frame, an electric fire, a recess for the screen, and whatever storage will fit around the edges. It looks the part in a showroom and then you live with nowhere to put the games console.
We come at it from joinery. The screen, the fire if you want one, the cabling, the ventilation and the storage are drawn as one piece of built-in furniture sized to the room — which in most Wiltshire living rooms means working around a chimney breast, two uneven alcoves and a floor that falls away towards the bay.
The finish is joinery too: painted to match the woodwork already in the room, or clad in real oak or walnut. Not the white, grey or gloss black a national supplier will offer you, because those are the three colours that ship flat.
The details that decide it
What goes into the build
Structure
A timber stud frame fixed back to the wall, packed and levelled off the floor and the ceiling rather than off the existing plaster. Where the screen hangs, the frame gets solid noggins so the mount fixes into timber, not into board.
Ventilation
A screen in a sealed recess overheats, and so does an amplifier in a closed cupboard. Concealed vents go in top and bottom of the recess and behind the equipment shelf, so warm air has somewhere to go. This is the single most common thing a cheap installation gets wrong.
Cabling
Conduit run through the frame before the boards go on, from the screen position down to the equipment shelf and out to the socket. Enough spare capacity to pull another cable through in five years without taking the wall apart.
Fires
Electric inset fires are straightforward and we fit them. If you want a real flame, that is a different job with a flue, a hearth and a Gas Safe or HETAS registered installer — we will build the joinery around it and bring the right trade in rather than improvising.
Finish
Spray-lacquered or hand-painted MDF in any colour, including matched to the existing woodwork in the room, or clad in oak, walnut or ash. Slatted acoustic panelling where you want the texture.
Electrics
New sockets and spurs behind the wall are installed and certified by a registered electrician under Part P. We do the first fix routes; we do not wire a consumer unit and call it done.
Recent work
Fitted joinery in real rooms
We are photographing a media wall now — it will be here as soon as it is finished. In the meantime, this is the same fitted joinery in the same kind of houses.
Structural beam and ceiling work
Ceiling opened up, new timber let in and the whole thing boarded and finished ready for decoration.
Period homes
Media walls in older houses
A great deal of the housing stock around Trowbridge, Bradford on Avon, Frome and Devizes is stone or Victorian brick, and a media wall in one of those is a different problem to a media wall in a new build. Walls are rarely flat or plumb, chimney breasts are often still live, and cutting into one without checking whether it is load-bearing is how people end up with a structural engineer's bill.
We check the flue and the structure before drawing anything, and where a room has features worth keeping — a cornice, a picture rail, an original fire surround — the joinery is designed to sit with them rather than bulldoze them. That is not a service a national supplier shipping a flat-pack frame is able to offer.
Questions
Media wall installation — common questions
What does a media wall cost?
A straightforward panelled media wall with a recessed screen and low storage generally lands between £2,000 and £4,000. Adding an electric fire, integrated lighting, full-height cabinetry or hardwood cladding takes it up from there. The screen, fire and electrics are usually supplied separately so you are not paying a markup on them.
Can a media wall go on a chimney breast?
Usually yes, and it is a good use of one — the breast gives you the depth to recess a screen, and the alcoves either side become the storage. The thing to check first is whether the flue is still live and whether the breast is load-bearing, because that decides how much of it can be cut into.
Do you do the electrics and plastering?
The joinery, the cabling routes and the ventilation are ours. New spurs and anything on the consumer unit are done by a registered electrician and certified under Part P. If the wall needs plastering or a fire needs a flue liner we bring in the right trade rather than having a go.
How is the TV ventilated?
A screen in a closed recess cooks itself, and so does an amplifier in a closed cupboard. Every build gets a ventilation path designed in — concealed vents top and bottom of the recess, and a cable void deep enough that nothing is bent hard against the back of the panel.
Get a price for your media wall
Send a photograph of the wall and the size of your screen and Alex will come and look. Free written estimate, no obligation.