Shop notes · 2026-11-04

Picking the living-room wall for a built-in entertainment center

Most living rooms in a Fremont-area ranch or split-level have three or four walls that could take a TV, and the furniture usually settled on one years ago without much thought. A built-in will not move once it is in, and the sofa and the paths through the room arrange themselves around it for as long as the family lives there. That makes the wall the first decision, made standing in the room before anyone draws a cabinet.

Which living-room wall should a built-in entertainment center go on?

The wall the sofa can face square-on, that no doorway or walkway cuts across, and that the big front window does not throw light onto in the afternoon. In most ranch and split-level living rooms that narrows the choice to one or two walls before any custom built-ins get drawn. The fireplace wall may be one of them. An outside wall can work too, with some care behind the cabinet.

Start with the seating. Stand where the sofa will be and look at each wall in turn. A screen that has to be watched over a shoulder, or from the end of the sofa with everyone’s head turned, wears thin quickly. So does a wall where the path from the front door to the kitchen runs between the sofa and the screen. Where the front door opens straight into the living room, as it does in plenty of ranches, traffic alone can rule out a wall.

Then the window. If the room has a big front window, where the screen sits relative to it matters. A screen on the wall directly across from the window picks up the window’s reflection, and on a sunny afternoon the picture washes out to a gray rectangle with the yard showing in it. A screen on the window wall itself puts the bright glass right beside it, so the eye fights the light. The wall at a right angle to the window, with the light falling across the room rather than at the screen, is the one that usually stays watchable at four in the afternoon.

The fireplace wall is one candidate among the others. With the firebox and mantel taking the middle of the wall, the screen tends to end up higher than eye level from the sofa, and some people find that it bothers them after a winter of evenings. Stacking both on one wall also costs the room its second focal point. With the fire on one wall and the screen on another, the room has two places for the eye to go. Some families would rather have the one wall and are happy with it.

Last, outside wall or inside wall. A cabinet back set tight against a cold outside wall through a Dodge County winter can hold cold air and damp behind it, so on an outside wall the cabinet gets a gap behind it or a vented back, and the closed bay where the equipment lives goes on an inside wall if the room allows one.

Should the TV sit in a cabinet opening or hang on open wall between two towers?

Open wall between two towers suits most rooms better. An opening boxed to fit today’s screen will not fit the next one, and screens keep getting larger while the cabinet around them lasts through several of them.

Leaving the wall between two tall cabinets open gives the next TV room to grow. An opening can still work if its surround is drawn generously or built to come off, so a wider screen does not mean rebuilding the middle of the piece. The mount is a separate matter, chosen for each TV as it arrives and hung by the installer.

Where does the sound go in a built-in?

Somewhere the sound can get out. A soundbar shut behind a solid door sounds like it is playing in the next room, so the shelf under the screen stays open, or its front is made from something sound passes through, like grille cloth or spaced slats.

A center speaker sits directly under the screen, which means that shelf’s height is set by the speaker rather than by what looks even on the drawing. Side speakers do best on open shelves in the towers, near the height of a seated listener’s ears, not behind doors.

Can the cable box and the wires live in the basement instead of the cabinet?

In a house with a basement under the living room, often yes. The cables can drop through the floor behind the cabinet and run along the basement ceiling, instead of being worked sideways through closed, painted walls upstairs. The boxes can then sit in a vented bay in the cabinet, or leave the room entirely, with the remote’s signal carried down to wherever they end up.

How easy that is depends on what is under the floor. Where the basement ceiling under the living room is still open joists, the run is short and the electrician or installer can see where every wire goes. Where the lower level has been finished, the drop still works, but it comes out through a ceiling someone will have to open and patch. In a split-level, check which room sits under the living room before counting on it.

Whatever the route, leave a pull string in it, or an open chase down the back of the cabinet, so the next cable can follow the first without anything being taken apart. Any closed bay that holds equipment needs a path for air in and a path for air out, or the boxes run hot. Outlets behind the TV are the electrician’s work. A desk raises the same wiring question on an office wall, answered along the back of the desk rather than down through a floor.

What goes in the lower cabinets when the whole family uses the room?

The lower run of an entertainment center ends up holding whatever the family does in the room besides watching the screen. Each of those things wants something different from the cabinet, and the cabinet maker needs the list before drawing anything.

• Game consoles need open shelves or fronts that let air through, and a shallow drawer beside them for the controllers and the charging cords.
• Board games and puzzles store better in deep drawers than on shelves, where the box on the bottom of the stack never gets played.
• Blankets for the sofa go in a deep drawer or a cabinet at the end of the run closest to the seating.
• Children’s bins belong on the floor-level shelf, open at the front, where a small child can pull one out and push it back without help.
• A record collection, if the family has one, needs a shelf deep enough for the sleeves and stiff enough that a full row does not bow it.

With a dog or small children in the house, doors along the bottom are worth having. Open low shelves collect dog hair and get emptied onto the rug by anyone who can crawl, and the remotes and controllers end up on the floor with everything else. A door with a catch keeps a curious toddler out of the game cases, and a drawer front stays shut against a dog that has learned where the treats are kept. The consoles are the exception. They still need their air, so their shelf gets a front that breathes or stays open at a height the dog cannot nose into.