Project Name: Spring Ponds

Location: Ongar, Essex

Date Completed: August 2019

Interior Designer: Darren Barker

Architect: E&M Design Partnership

Construction Company: ART

Part of an impressive new build property, Prestige Audio was commissioned to create a whole house scheme involving completely integrated and attractively designed AV and home automation experiences. The centre piece of this was to be a world-class home cinema including a stunning and fully stocked bar that as well as delivering music and movie entertainment for the whole family, also acts as an entertaining space for the owners.

The customer’s original idea for the area was to include lots of white marble, Prestige Audio worked with them to create a darker, moodier space with exciting lighting (including a starlight ceiling), that not only looks and feels fantastic, but enables the AV equipment to deliver a truly world-class level of performance. The cinema conforms to all the globally recognised highest standards of performance, is Dolby Atmos compatible and 4K ready.

A home cinema room really is the epitome of making sure form meets function, and the Spring Ponds cinema, with its bespoke designed seating, wallcoverings, luxurious carpeting, and spectacular bar area sees aesthetics and audio-visual performance meet in perfect unison. All of the audio-visual equipment needed to run the cinema is hidden away or woven into the very fabric of the room itself.

The two rows of home cinema seating include a chaise lounge section in the front for extra comfort, and all the other seats have stainless steel cup holders and can fully recline at the touch of a button. Finished in high-quality black leather, all the seats were bespoke commissioned and hand-build by one of the world’s leading experts (Fortress Seating).

The bar area is finished in moody stylish black marble, matching the rest of the room’s aesthetic, and the bar enjoys aspect lighting that shows this area off in its best light for party nights, or darkens during movie play back. The bar is equipped with six leather covered, swivel bar stools, to offer more comfortable seating options. The starlight ceiling was hand build by Prestige Audio’s technicians, it is possible to purchase these ready-made, but in a room of this quality, they designed and built something bespoke for the room.

For Prestige Audio and the client, the key aspect of this project was the way they could make an entertaining space full of accent lighting also perfect for watching a movie in a totally dark environment all in one room. In particular, the low reflection marble from the bar makes this possible. This looks fantastic when the lights are up but helps with the cinema performance when lights are down. The client also loves the hand-made starlight ceiling.