We’ve touched on the subject of designing with your TV before in this post, where we talked about The Frame from Samsung. Traditionally a TV has been a sore thumb for designers and stylists with many a blog post written on how to disguise a TV in a room. As I said, my personal view is that trying to hide the the TV often yields poor results making the outcome worse.
These days for many people the TV is actually now a feature. It is something people want easy access to and a lot of people do want an oversized TV hung on their wall in front of their sofa where they can kick back at the end of a long day.
For those us that prefer the television not to feature, here are our favourite ideas on how to minimise the impact of your TV in your living space.
GALLERY WALL
Working your TV into a gallery wall, or building a gallery wall around your TV set, is an easy and affordable way to ‘hide’ your TV in your living space. Ultimately the effect of the artwork around the TV is that it blends in with the other pieces and ensures the TV isn’t the glaring focal point on the wall. The idea works whether your TV is on a stand or hung on the wall.
BOOKSHELF
Similarly to a gallery wall, building your TV into storage and a bookshelf stops the TV from becoming the focal point on the wall. As you can see from these images the TV is hardly hidden from view, but the recess of the shelving unit helps to hide it from view at different angles around the room, while styling the rest of the shelves brings in other points of interest to the space.
HIDDEN STORAGE
Taking the built in option one step further is the hidden storage option. Sliding doors, sliding art and actual closed cupboards are all unique ways to hide your TV. These solutions often require custom work, so the cost benefit factor comes into play on just how badly you want to hide your TV.
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DARK WALL
A personal favourite of the ‘there but not there’ look when it comes to hiding your TV is the dark feature wall. The TV unit blends so well into the darkness of the wall that is immediately becomes a non-feature.
We’ve rounded up the best of the budget media units out there.
A side note on our product round ups and room designs…. someone asked us the other day if we always use the same suppliers. It’s not so much that we use the same suppliers for all our projects, but for the purposes of the blog we try to make it so that the pieces will be accessible for everyone across South Africa. We will however start featuring local suppliers going forward, so apologies in advance if a piece you love is only available in local cities!
We do also realise there are even more budget pieces available at large retailers. Sure you can buy a TV unit for R899, but have you really looked at it?! That is when things really start to go south in terms of quality and design appeal. So we try to bring you the best of all worlds – good design, decent quality and budget friendly.
1. Oakley Plasma from MRP Home, R2,000 | 2. Harvey Plasma Unit from Coricraft, R2,995 | 3. Oakley Plasma Large from MRP Home, R3,000 | 4. Loft Tv Unit from @home, R3,999 | 5. Oslo Plasma from MRP Home, R4,000 | 6. Rod Unit from Weylandts, R6,050 | 7. Tamara Unit from @home, R6,299 | 8. Contemporary Console from Eleven Past, R6,999 | 9. Nordic Unit from Knus, R7,015 | 10. Fjord Unit from Coricraft, R7,495