An entertainment unit can easily begin with one question: How big is the television?
But after more than 30 years designing and making furniture, I’ve found that’s rarely the best place to start.
The television matters, of course. So does the equipment that goes with it. But before any of that, I want to understand the room.
How large is the wall? What else is happening in the space? Is it an open-plan living area or a dedicated television room? What furniture is already there? How much storage is genuinely needed? And, perhaps most importantly, how do the people living there want the room to feel?
Those questions usually tell us far more about what an entertainment unit needs to become.
The television is part of the room — not necessarily the focus
Televisions have changed enormously over the years.
When I first started making entertainment furniture, we were accommodating deep televisions, video recorders, amplifiers, speakers and all sorts of equipment. Today, televisions are thin and much of the technology around them has become smaller. Streaming devices such as Apple TV and compact Foxtel boxes take up very little room.
But some things haven’t changed.
There are still cables. Equipment still needs ventilation. Some clients have substantial sound systems or older equipment they want to retain. And everything still needs somewhere sensible to go.
What has changed is the opportunity we now have to think beyond the traditional television cabinet.
A well-designed entertainment unit can become part of the architecture of a room. Or it can remain a beautiful freestanding piece of furniture. It can float quietly against a wall, provide substantial storage, incorporate display areas, or even make the television disappear completely.
There isn’t one correct solution.
That is why we start with the room.
Sometimes the lightest solution is the right one
Not every wall needs to be filled.
In some rooms, a relatively simple custom entertainment unit is enough. Floating it above the floor gives the television something to visually connect with while keeping the room feeling open.
The proportions are important here.
One mistake I see quite often is choosing an entertainment unit simply because it is wide enough for the television. On a large wall, that can leave the furniture looking undersized and slightly lost.
A client may initially imagine a unit around 2.1 metres long, for example, but once we consider the full width of the wall and the furniture around it, 2.7 metres may give the room far better balance.
That doesn’t mean bigger is always better.
It means the scale should come from the room.
This is where custom entertainment units become particularly useful. We are not trying to make the room fit a predetermined piece of furniture. We can adjust the furniture to suit the architecture, the television, the storage requirements and the proportions of the space.
A piece of furniture should still feel like furniture
This becomes particularly important in open-plan homes.
The kitchen, dining and living areas may all occupy one large space, and often the same cabinetry language is carried from the kitchen into the living room.
There are situations where that works beautifully.
But there are also times when continuing the kitchen cabinetry right across the living area makes everything begin to feel like one enormous kitchen.
Sometimes the living area needs its own identity.
An entertainment unit — and custom furniture more broadly — can help establish that.
Timber, proportion, shadow lines, changes in depth, floating elements and carefully placed open areas can make the piece feel more like furniture and less like another run of cabinetry.
Even quite restrained details can make an enormous difference.
Our Horizon entertainment unit is a good example. Around the front is a fine 9 mm surround, while the drawer or door fronts sit slightly further back. It is a small detail, but that change in level creates a shadow line and gives an otherwise very simple form greater depth.
You may not immediately look at it and think, that’s why I like it.
But you feel the difference.
Different rooms need different visual weight
A light floating unit can be exactly right in one interior and completely wrong in another.
Some rooms need more presence.
We have designed entertainment units with deeper storage, heavier proportions and stronger forms because that visual weight suited the architecture and the other furniture in the room.
That is part of the reason I don’t believe an entertainment unit should be designed in isolation.
We look at the colours and materials already in the home. We look at the lounge, tables, artwork and architecture. We consider whether the new piece needs to sit quietly or whether it should help anchor the room.
Storage is considered in much the same way.
Rather than adding cupboards simply because there is room for them, I prefer to understand what they are actually going to hold.
Equipment?
Glassware?
Throws?
Books?
Objects that need to be hidden away?
Once you know that, you can give the storage a purpose.
When an entertainment unit becomes part of the wall
At the other end of the scale are projects where the entertainment unit becomes a complete wall system.
One of our larger custom projects stretches across a wall of more than six metres.
Instead of treating that enormous area as one continuous block of cabinetry, we broke it into different elements.
A floating lower section provides flap-door and drawer storage. Open areas create breathing space for a small number of decorative objects. Timber panels provide a background for the wall-mounted television, while subtle timber detailing creates relief across what could otherwise have become a very large flat surface.
On the right-hand side we incorporated a cocktail cabinet with a flap-down door, along with additional display shelving.
There is also shallow concealed storage beside the television.
I particularly like shallow storage when it is used properly. Glassware, vases and similar pieces don’t necessarily need a very deep cupboard. With shallow adjustable shelving, you open the door and everything is immediately visible rather than having one row of objects disappearing behind another.
The lighting was treated in much the same way as the storage — by thinking about how it would actually be used.
The cocktail bar, central area and shelving have separately controlled LED lighting.
You might want just the cocktail cabinet illuminated while entertaining. On another evening, you might use only the central light. Or the shelving can be lit independently.
Those choices allow the same wall to have quite a different character at different times of the day.
And that, to me, is where custom furniture becomes interesting.
It isn’t simply about making something to an unusual size.
It is about thinking through how the room will actually be lived in.
Creating depth without making a wall feel heavy
Another custom wall system uses our Horizon entertainment unit as its floating base.
The Horizon can also be made as a freestanding entertainment unit, in sizes ranging from approximately 1.2 metres through to 3.6 metres, but in this project its design language was extended into a much larger architectural composition.
The lower unit floats above the floor, while the cabinetry above and around the television provides substantial storage.
Rather than allowing all of that cabinetry to become one flat surface, we played with depth.
A walnut display box projects beyond the surrounding cabinetry, creating a showcase area and breaking the long wall into different planes.
It is only a difference of around 50 millimetres.
But visually, that 50 millimetres matters.
The deeper walnut section creates a point of focus, while the shallower surrounding cupboards recede. Combined with the floating base, the wall has depth and movement rather than simply reading as a large bank of storage.
This is one of those details that demonstrates why proportion isn’t only about height and width.
Depth matters too.
And sometimes the television can disappear altogether
There is one more feature in this particular wall that changes the room completely.
Above the television are what appear to be a series of cupboard doors.
One of those cupboards houses the entertainment equipment.
The others aren’t really cupboards at all.
They conceal the television.
At the press of a button, the television and attached soundbar rise into the cavity above and disappear from view.
When the television is hidden, the soundbar can still be used for music. In this particular installation it is part of a Sonos system, so the owners can have music in the room without having a large black screen dominating the wall.
When they want to watch television or a movie, the screen comes back down.
I think this is a wonderful example of what an entertainment unit can do when we stop thinking of it purely as something that sits underneath a television.
The room can change character.
When friends are over, it can simply be a living and entertaining space.
When it’s time to relax and watch a film or favourite program, it becomes a television room again.
The technology is there when it is wanted — and it doesn’t need to control the room when it isn’t.
There are many ways of achieving that, from sliding panels to lift systems and televisions that rise from or disappear into furniture. It’s an area we’ll explore separately because there is much more to it than simply hiding a screen.
Designing for the way you live
For me, the best entertainment units aren’t necessarily the largest or the most complicated.
They’re the ones that feel as though they belong in the room.
Sometimes that’s a simple floating unit.
Sometimes it’s a freestanding piece of furniture.
Sometimes it stretches across an entire wall and combines the television, equipment, storage, display, lighting and even a cocktail bar.
The solution changes because the people and the rooms change.
That’s why our process doesn’t begin with What size is your television?
It begins with a conversation about the room, what needs to happen there and how you want to live in it.
The television comes into that conversation.
It just doesn’t have to lead it.
At Special Things Furniture, we design and make custom entertainment units in Melbourne, from understated freestanding and floating pieces through to fully integrated wall systems.
If you’re considering an entertainment unit for your home, we’d love to hear from you at Special Things.