Living in a house has a number of advantages rarely found in other types of residential properties. First of all, if built by yourself, it can cater to your exact stylistic preferences, reflecting you as an individual better than any other sort of housing. Moreover, being essentially a single-family estate, it can offer you an unparalleled level of privacy with its thick walls and distance from other homes, not to mention access to your own private garden, a place amazingly suited for both relaxation and some light horticulture. All in all, the advantages far outweigh the drawbacks.
It doesn’t mean, however, that there are none of the disadvantages. Paradoxically, one of the biggest benefits of a house – its size, can quickly shift into a problem. If your family is small in size or the majority of it moved out, your perfect house could quickly turn into a collection of empty rooms, their beautiful aspire flooring doing nothing but collecting dust.
Fortunately, if you don’t want the above to be the permanent state, there are numerous ways in which you could adapt various rooms to perform new functions. If you’re an avid gamer and/or a geek extraordinaire, the best solution would be to remake your spare bedroom into the gaming den of your dreams. With that in mind, grab your favourite beverage and read on as we explain how to create space even the biggest video game aficionados would be jealous of!
Always Start With the Basics
Any transformation of this kind is bound to be a highly invasive one. After all, creating a proper gaming den isn’t simply the matter of putting in a video game console and calling it a day. The changes introduced to your spare bedroom are going to be rather deep and require extensive work to undo, so it’s best to take it slowly before you arm yourself with a hammer and paintbrush.
To start off, clear out the room. Gaming space is rather unlike your typical bedchamber in both arrangement and type of furniture used, so removing everything for now is for the best. Once you do that, do some heavy cleaning to remove all the dirt and grime that accumulated under the furniture. Once there’s nothing inside but walls and windows, take accurate measurements of the whole bedroom. These types of rooms tend to be on the smaller side, so you need to calculate everything properly to fit some of the bigger appliances.
All gaming room ideas start with a thought. Once you know how much space you have to work with, formulate a basic theory of how the new room should look and function, e.g.:
- What sort of style or theme will you go for?
- How many gaming devices do you plan to pack into your future game room?
- Will it be for personal use only, or do you plan to regularly invite your friends for LAN parties?
All these questions and more should be answered well before you start doing bigger changes.
Take Care of Your Walls
You might think that walls don’t matter in the grand scheme that is your future gamer cave, but this is where you’re wrong. The reasons are twofold.
Coloured Walls Can Have Beneficial Effects On Both You And the Room
First of all, leaving their surface in a default white colour is a great waste of an opportunity to personalize the gaming room. Adding colour is perhaps the easiest way to make it visually striking without any sacrifice whatsoever in terms of functionality.
What’s more, certain colours can have an impact on the way we feel. To illustrate the point, red is often associated with stimulative effects, making it a perfect choice for fans of high-intensity racing and e-sports games.
Soundproofing May Be Necessary
The second reason is sound. Unless you’re a big fan of headphones, you will be using your speakers set to high volume in order to fully appreciate all the amazing music and effects the games have to offer. That can be quite irritating to other residents, especially if the sounds are of the aggressive kind, say gunshots or a fast techno soundtrack.
As such, it may be a good idea to add some acoustic foam tiles to your walls and ceiling. These have the distinct advantage of absorbing a large part of the noise your games generate, while often looking amazing in their own right.
Place the Furniture of Your Choice
As mentioned above, your old bedroom’s furniture is more than likely not up to the task here. As such, feel free to pick new ones but remember to take into account all of the aspects you decided on during the planning process, such as:
Size
In such a small, enclosed space, size matters a lot. While a giant u-shaped sofa is certainly a dream of many gamers, you may find out that either there’s not enough space for it, or it takes so much of the immediate area you need to invent new and creative ways of moving around the room. In this case, perhaps it’s better to settle on an L-shaped piece, a design definitely more compact in terms of its dimensions, but one that still retains a lot of the sitting space its larger cousin offers. Ultimately, the choice is yours.
Style/Theme
Picking a dominant theme and style is often a big part of designing your gaming den. After all, if it doesn’t conform to your exact preferences, your gaming experience may be worse. To illustrate the point, it can be much easier to fully immerse yourself in the futuristic narratives of various sci-fi games when the furniture around you is a seamless fusion of glass, metal, and plastic. In the same manner, diehard fantasy games fans might prefer articles that emphasize their use of wood and other natural materials.
Number of Individual Pieces
This is where the number of people regularly using the room becomes important. If the room is solely for your own entertainment, with guests being a rare sight, you may want to go minimal. One desk, a comfy chair, and perhaps a pair of small armchairs for sporadic visitors should more than suffice if your gaming sessions are predominantly solo.
The situation changes drastically if your gaming room is supposed to be, say, the future “headquarters” of your MMORPG guild. In such a case, even a big sofa might not be enough – it’s better to invest in a number of desks and good-quality gaming chairs so that your friends can quickly unpack their laptops and enjoy your sessions together in ultimate comfort. For maximum satisfaction, consider adding a small table in the middle so that you have somewhere to place all the sweets and snacks normally served during your strategy meetings.
Install Your Preferred Gaming Devices and Peripherals
Finally, we’ve reached the meat of the matter. Now that everything else has been taken care of, consider what sort of gamer you are.
I Prefer Consoles
Obviously, someone who enjoys predominantly console titles will require a device of this sort. But, if your budget allows for it, consider adding as many types as you can.
The reasoning here is that many console titles are not only brand but even device-exclusive, meaning that to play the God of War series in its entirety, you’ll need not only the newest PlayStation 5 (which is backwards compatible with the PS4 system) but PlayStation 2 and 3 as well. A Mario title, in turn, may require you to purchase a Nintendo system such as the newest Switch.
Secondly, when deciding on a TV to plug your console in, consider its size first and foremost. Bigger screens may offer you better resolution and details, but at the same time may be too big for the room and consequently wear out your eyes quicker.
I Stick To PCs
PC gamers have it easier. For them, it’s simply a matter of assembling the best gaming rig their money can get, plugging it into a screen with a high refresh rate (e.g. 144Hz), and choosing the PC-specific gaming peripherals such as a high-DPI mouse or a mechanical keyboard. Virtually any computer game can be run with some effort, no matter its age or publisher.
Never Forget About the Sound Quality
No matter your gaming preferences, you should never forget about some quality speakers. An ideal choice here would be a home theatre system, such as the 5.1 one, offering you a solution modest in size with still-exceptional sound quality. But as mentioned above, consider proofing your walls, as such a speaker setup can generate quite a lot of noise.
Add Some Final Touches
Once the devices of your choice are properly installed, you’re essentially done with your transformation. All that’s left at this point is adding some decorative elements to further bring out the theme and style of your room.
Let There Be Light
Consider adding some LED strips or even RGB lightbulbs to your room. These solutions are immensely popular these days, as they allow you virtually unlimited freedom in terms of illumination without being overly expensive. Just remember that some colours (e.g., blue) are harmful to your eyes if used in excess.
A Fine Addition To Your Collection
If you feel particularly strongly about a certain game franchise, consider adding a glass cabinet and filling it with collectables. A small one can even be placed on your desk if there’s no space elsewhere, but the amount of flavour and geek energy it will add to your design will be immeasurable. A definite must-have for any gaming enthusiast.
Conclusion
As you can see, transforming your spare bedroom into the gaming den of your dreams doesn’t have to be a complicated task. As long as you have a plan and the will to implement your vision, you’re good to go. From a quiet place of relaxation to the headquarters of your gaming group, anything is possible.
Just remember to never shy away from personalizing it as much as possible. After all, it’s a place of relaxation, of dreams becoming a reality, and who’s going to use it more often than yourself?
