The home cinema room in our Ibiza villa is finally finished. Not “almost finished” or “functional enough.” I mean properly done—calibrated, wired, soundproofed, and ready to go. What started as a throwaway idea (“let’s set up a little movie room”) became one of the most technical and honestly satisfying projects of the whole move.
We went full UK-spec. None of the halfway nonsense. I wanted a proper home theatre setup with the kind of gear you’d find in a high-end London townhouse, but fitted here on the island. Christian, the only person I trust to install anything more complicated than a lamp, handled the entire installation. If there’s a cable hidden behind the wall, he put it there.
The core of the system is a Dolby Atmos 9.1.4 surround setup. That’s nine surround speakers, one subwoofer (okay, we added a second later), and four ceiling speakers. The sound moves above you, around you, and through you. We used KEF and Bowers & Wilkins for the speakers, and the bass comes from dual SVS sealed subs. It’s not overkill. It’s immersive.
For video, we installed a 4K ultra short throw laser projector. It throws a massive image even in a relatively compact space, and the brightness and contrast are good enough for daytime viewing—though we did go full blackout with custom blinds to create that proper dark-room feel. Everything runs through a Yamaha Aventage AV receiver with HDMI 2.1 support and full eARC compatibility. There’s zero lag, flawless lip-sync, and switching from Netflix to the Apple TV to a local Blu-ray rip is instant.
The room itself? Acoustic wall panels, riser seating with vibration transducers (I know), smart lighting that switches scenes automatically depending on content—Christian even installed a hidden equipment rack with active cooling and power management. It’s probably the most technically advanced room in the house.
But the funny part? It’s not about the tech. Not really. It’s about what it’s given us.
The night we tested it, I didn’t think about work. That’s rare. Between the remote team still running on Frankfurt hours, constant client pings, and the impossible task of drawing boundaries when you’re your own boss, switching off has been difficult. The home cinema room has given us that switch. Sara and I sat with the kids—Leo had snacks lined up like he was manning a concession stand, and the twins immediately fought over the centre seat—and we just watched. We laughed. We breathed. No distractions, no phones. Just sound and light and silence in the right places.
That was also the first night in weeks I didn’t feel the urge to smoke. Normally, evenings are the hardest—post-dinner, post-emails, that hour when I used to head outside and light one just for the ritual. But that night, with the sound cranked and the lights low, I didn’t even think about it. Not once. It was like the cinema swallowed that craving and left something quieter behind.
If you’re planning to build a home cinema room in Spain—especially if you’ve moved from the UK and want to keep those familiar AV standards—do it properly. Get a Dolby Atmos-compatible receiver. Use proper in-ceiling speakers. Don’t cheap out on the projector. And for sanity’s sake, use someone like Christian who understands both British systems and local installation quirks.
It might seem like a luxury. And, fine, it is. But it’s also been one of the only finished things in a life that’s otherwise been mid-build for months. This room made something feel whole. And in the middle of quitting smoking, building a business from scratch, and trying to remember who I am between two time zones, that’s no small thing.