Let the fun flow in rooms designed to keep everyone entertained

How often do you find yourself replying to messages or scrolling through Instagram when you’ve just put a film on? It’s an easy habit to slip into when you’re in the living room – but perhaps you’d pay more attention to the big screen if you had your own at-home cinema or games room.

Sounds decadent, but you don’t need a cavernous space lined with rows of seating. Maybe you have a guest room that’s barely ever used, like the room on the page opposite. It was designed by Phina (formerly known as Jeffreys Interiors) for clients who wanted to turn a redundant third bedroom in their Edinburgh flat into a multipurpose home office and cinema snug.

The desk is cleverly concealed by pocket doors so that when it’s time to settle down and dim the lights, there’s no reminder of the Teams calls that took place earlier. When designing a room like this, lean into the theatre of it all. Wrapping the room in red (this jammy shade is Zoffany’s Crimson) conjures the feel of an old-school picturehouse, bolstered here by heavy blackout window drapes.

“We wanted a modern take on big stage curtains but we didn’t want to have velvet everywhere, so we went for a nice chunky linen weave,” says Jo Aynsley, creative director of the practice. A squashy sofa is also a must. Here, it’s placed opposite the TV, which sits at eye level within custom cabinetry.

For the tech side of things, the interior designer called upon home entertainment with them to figure out the best placement of everything to achieve surround sound without affecting the room’s aesthetic,” says Jo. “Some speakers, such as the sound bar under the TV, are on display, but we hid the subwoofer under the sofa.”

If you have more square metres to play with – a basement, say – you could scale up your cinema. Or how about a games room? These are ideal breakout spaces for kids, especially if your home is the go-to for family parties. And again, these rooms can wear a few hats. There’s more than meets the eye to this snooker table, sourced from Brown’s Antiques in Bedford for a games room designed by Kate Guinness.

“It has a lid so it can be converted into a dining table for big dinner parties,” says the designer. The table was reupholstered in a purple baize to harmonise with the rich magenta walls. “The room doesn’t get a lot of natural light, so we embraced this with bold, rich colours that work brilliantly at nighttime by lamp light as well as in low-level daylight,” explains Kate, who placed standard lamps around the room for a soft glow and installed a trio of industrial lights (designed bespoke by David Turner Workshop) above the games table so that everyone can see who’s winning. And losing.

Playfulness rears its head in a more understated way in this cool home that one might call a canvas primed for artwork.

Studio September turns an Edinburgh home into a canvas primed for artwork