I am not shy about being nerdy, I will talk anyone’s ear off about board games. That said, and as the previous paragraph implies, I want my living space to be functional for nerdy things, but for other things as well. So I don’t want every inch of the place to look like a massive board game fan lives here, unless I have enough games for all of it.

Bold or Subtle

As I talk about this, I am sitting in a very nerdy room. I have board games everywhere around me, I have action figures for comics, movies, and anime, there are D&D books and comics on shelves as well as classic video games. This room is a very bold and nerdy room. I even have expansion box covers on the floor that I am going to be putting up on the walls. This is a very bold and nerdy room.

On the flip side, in our living room. It looks pretty standard. Yes, there is a Switch and a PS4 hooked up to the TV. And yes, one of the pieces of art does have a T.A.R.D.I.S. as part of it. But it’s the subtle little pops of nerdiness that you might not notice if you aren’t looking for them. Like, in the kitchen on the sill next to the sink, there is a baby Yoda little figure. It isn’t something that you’d notice walking into the room, but it is there.

Why talk about this, because not every room needs to be so obviously nerdy. I don’t need a Kallax of board games in my living room. I don’t need movie posters hung up there. But in some of the other rooms, I can really lean into the nerdiness. When thinking about decorating nerdy, I don’t think people should hide the fact that they are nerdy. I proudly show off my game room to people. But with that, I also don’t think every room needs to be only nerdy.

Decorate for Function

What do I mean by this? Well, in my gaming room, I can make it super nerdy, because it is meant to be very nerdy. The room has a single focus, to play board games. The room with the games at our old house, that was for storing games and a guest bedroom. So I shouldn’t have gone crazy in that room and made it all nerdy with all the decorations because, it had to function as a bedroom as well. Here, I can have a gaming table and it’s all good.

But on the flip side, consider the function of your living room or kitchen. Those are supposed to function as well, a kitchen and a living room. If I were to put game shelves in our living room and a gaming table, I have now changed the function of that room. And I don’t just have people over to play board games. I want to hang out, maybe watch a movie, play with the toddler, have conversations, host holidays, things like that. If I were to make the living room extremely nerdy, it would no longer meet that functional requirement, and the house as a whole wouldn’t.

That is why the living room and kitchen might have those nerdy pops, but they aren’t completely nerdy. They aren’t going to be a space where it loses the functionality of the room in order to be nerdy. Now, this varies with your living situation, when I lived as a bachelor in an apartment, I could have the main areas be nerdier. Why, because I didn’t have the excess space for a game room, for a library. Everything had to be in the main area.

But What Do You Decorate With?

Well, let’s talk about our three nerdy rooms to be. I say to be because the theater room will get finished over time and the library will be getting it’s wall creating it in June and the start of July.

The Gaming Room

With the gaming room, I have just gone all over the place with nerdy. Right now since I have comics in here, I went with comics as well as just some other posters and things that I had. But I am going to be changing it up. The comics will likely stay, but there are a few things that I want to do.

Firstly, I have expansion box covers, and this actually drove some of the thinking. With that expansion box covers, I want to put them up on the wall to create some cool art. In particular I have 5 box covers for Marvel United that I can put up which will bridge that gap between the games and the comics. It also means that I don’t feel bad about throwing away the rest of the boxes and condensing stuff down, because now I got some art.

I also want to add in some hanging shelves or maybe even a plate rail. A plate rail is basically a thin shelf with a little lip that generally goes up pretty high in a room. If I were to get that, I could start to story and display the action figures up there but as well minis that I have painted to show them off. For example, all the Marvel United minis that need to be painted. All of that together would give it a cohesive feeling for gaming.

The Theater Room

I won’t talk about this one as much because I already have talked about it. You can find that in the article on Building a Home Theater. But to do a quick recap, we are going to have movie posters on the wall or TV show posters, we have a popcorn machine and we have some soft lighting to give it more of that movie theater feel. We want it to be a cozy space, as well, though, for sitting and enjoying a movie, so we have a futon, a 6″ long bean bag chair, and a chair down there.

As the room gets finished off, I might add in some sound dampening and I am guessing we’ll paint it a darker color so that the screen doesn’t reflect off the walls as much. Basically, we want it to feel a bit like a theater and mainly like a really relaxing place to watch a show or a movie.

The Library

Finally, we have the library. The library we are going to be focused on a few things. We had some fairy pictures that we had in a bathroom at our old place. Now we don’t have room for that, so they will go in the library. Along with that we are going to be adding in other book related nerdy things. We have a Hobbit throw pillow, a Sherlock Holmes cutout, and Kristen is going to go create a book nook.

The book nook is going to fall in line with books as well fairies as it is going to be a like a little fairy themed one. I think that will be fun to really be that subtle nerdy things in an already very nerdy room. I like it when a space has enough going on in it that you are looking and finding new things over time. This also works well with subtle things.

Do you have a nerdy room, share a picture over on Twitter or the Facebook page, links below.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Theater Room Basics

When thinking about a theater room or even a dedicated TV room, there are a few things you need to think about. In particular for a room that we want to call a theater room, I have four primary things that I’ve thought about. Screen, sound, seating, and snacks, the four important S’s.

Screen

This decision matters on multiple levels. Firstly you need to decide do you want to do like I am, and have a projector set-up with a pull down screen or do you want to have a television and just go with a big flat screen. If I were to do it now, I might lean towards a large television simply because 4k projectors are not cheap. However, 1080p projectors, those are a much more reasonable price. I also like that I can go bigger cheaper. I think that the width of the screen I have is 8′, and that’s width, so it’s notably bigger than a 85″ television and those cost a whole lot more than the pulldown screen and projector. So the projector route is definitely better for the budget. Clarity will suffer slightly, but since I’m putting it into a basement room I don’t have much to worry about with light any time during the day.

Sound

Now, if you pick a television, you can just use the sound from the TV if you want. But we’re talking about a theater room, so you shouldn’t just have a normal sound system. I have a 5.1 surround sound, and I’d consider upgrading it, when we finish off the space to 7.1 surround sound depending on cost. This will give you more of a theater feel and it’s a lot of fun. This generally means getting speakers and a receiver. This now starts adding up in price, but you can get a solid sound set-up for $400 if you look at refurbished options as well as new. We’re really looking to get out enough sound so that it feels like you’re getting a bit of a theater experience with it. A solid sound bar and subwoofer would be another option as well.

Seating

Theater chairs are not that comfortable, though they have gotten way way better during my lifetime. But this is a home theater, so the seating should be comfortable. We have a nice quality futon as well as an arm chair and a 6′ long bean bag chair in our area. These are good items, though I feel like we will eventually want to get something better, some assembly required so we can get it down the basement, that will turn the room into an even more cozy spot to watch movies and television. What I generally look for is something that I can lounge on, we had a sectional at the old place and that was quite comfortable to stretch out on. Now we have an ottoman to use as a foot rest and a foot rest for the arm chair as well. Plus the bean bag chair can either go the long way for full body comfort for one person or two people can lean up against it the other way.

Snacks

Every good movie theater has tons of over priced snacks, but snacks that you expect. Popcorn is of course the biggest. We picked up a table top movie theater style popcorn machine for our theater room. This was about a $60 purchase and it just gives the room a sort of aesthetic that I want in a room that is supposed to be a theater room. We also have a kegerator down there as well for when we don’t want to walk up the stairs to get a beer from the fridge. This is just a fun little feature that I really like with home brewing to have nice access to beer where I’ll be watching television and movies. But that isn’t needed, I think if you want to really lean into the movie theater room the popcorn machine and maybe a minifridge would be what I’d target for having snacks in the room. We, to complete the look, also got plastic popcorn containers that look like the cardboard medium sized popcorn containers you can get at theaters, or maybe the small ones, I don’t get popcorn at theaters all that often.

Taking It Over the Top

So for a good theater room, those four S’s are what I consider essential. Now, snacks could be argued, but at least some place to put out snacks easily is needed. Let’s talk about some things that can take your home theater over the top.

Movie Posters

This is the easiest thing to do because you can pretty easily get your hands on movie posters. But getting some and getting them framed and up is nice aesthetically for a home theater. If you want to go really fancy, do a box of sorts with some light in there to shine onto the posters. This would give you minimal lighting for the room and also add to that theater aesthetic.

A Curtain

This could be done one of two ways. Now most theaters don’t open and close curtains around their screens, but if you wanted to go for that old time charm you could. Or you could get get a curtain to frame the screen. This is more common to what you see, it helps diffuse the light in the room by giving it a soft surface that it won’t reflect off of around the screen, and again aesthetically it’s like a movie theater.

A Marquee

We picked up this for our home theater room. A marquee light box seems like a really fun idea to have in the room. You get a ton of letters, I think the one I got came with 250 of them, so probably can spell out most any movie title. When we can have movie nights again, it’s going to be fun to throw up the name of the movie on the marquee for when people come down into the room. And it was quite cheap as well, I believe the one that I picked up was $20 on Amazon, you can find it here. This one is very simple, but you can get bigger ones that will really make the room feel like a theater.

Lighting

Now, lighting is important. But for a lot of existing rooms where you are just adding to the room instead of remodeling it, you’re limited in lighting. That is my case as well. However, I am sprucing up the lighting in the room. The marquee itself will provide minimal lighting when on in the room. But we also have some curtain lights. Think about a ten foot strand of wire with ten 8 foot strings of lights attached to it. With just that much light in the room, and it’s a soft light, it is easy to see to move around, but not so bright as to diffuse the projector and create a faded image.

Now, this seems like a lot for a home theater, and to do one up so it’s really fancy isn’t a cheap project. I make mine cheaper by getting refurbished electronics whenever I can. Even then, though, with a XBox One and a Wii down there as well as the projector, it is spendy. All of that said, I love it for watching movies and television. There is something about the big screen that is just more fun, and having a place to spread out and watch and be cozy do an in home date night, all of those things are fun and worth it for me. You’ll need to decide how far you want to go with it, but if you do, show me pictures of your home theater set-up.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.