Hide Tech


After you’ve researched and compared, contrasted and gone to the ends of the earth to find the perfect entertainment system or sprawling flat-screen TV, what do you do with it once you’ve gotten it home and out of the Styrofoam peanuts? There are two basic choices: Hide your tech or show it off.


After you’ve researched and compared, contrasted and gone to the ends of the earth to find the perfect entertainment system or sprawling flat-screen TV, what do you do with it once you’ve gotten it home and out of the Styrofoam peanuts? There are two basic choices: Hide your tech or show it off.

“Ten years ago, you stuck it in an armoire and thought you were super-creative,” says Heather Vaughan, one-third owner of the design firm Pentimento Interiors in Newton. “People don’t want their technology to be intrusive, and yet they want full access to it.” These days, she says, if clients want electronic equipment hidden, she can design a custom built-in place to hold it.

Because Pentimento works on a lot of older homes in Lexington, Concord and Sudbury, with small rooms and very little space for audio/video equipment, she often has to be creative. “With rooms that are awkward for TV viewing, I do a custom build-in where the TV comes out of the wall on a reciprocal arm, which you can angle towards you wherever you’re sitting,” she says. When the TV is not in use, you simply push it back into its cabinet and tuck it away.

Another option is installing a projection screen that mechanically rises and falls by remote.

Kate Maloney, owner of Kate Maloney Interiors in Cambridge, says an overwhelming majority of her clients prefer to hide tech toys. “When the TV is exposed, then often so are all the other things,” she says, like cords and wires. “I think my clients find that it actually helps with their resale value to keep their electronics out of sight,” she says.

Maloney says a TV can disappear when not in use. “Recently in a house in Cambridge, we built the wall out around a fireplace to create a recess where the clients’ television could sit,” she says, working with architect Charles Myer of Charles R. Myer & Partners, also in Cambridge. When the doors to the recess were open, the TV could be accessed. And when they were closed, “it looked exactly like a wall. You would never know it opened to reveal a TV,” she says.

For couples looking to hide a TV in the bedroom, Vaughan positions a flat-screen TV at the foot of the bed, where it can rise and retreat using a remote control. “This is especially good for new-construction houses with a lot of windows, and for large bedrooms that might also contain a sitting room,” she says. This setup allows the TV to turn 180 degrees, so that even morning news-watchers, for instance, can beat sun glare by customizing view angles.

As technology has become more versatile, there’s no limit to where audio/video equipment is installed, including kitchens and bathrooms. “There’s a 10-inch Audiovox [LCD TV] that we can mount underneath cabinets,” says Vaughan. “It just flips down when you want to watch it and flips back up flat against the bottom of the cabinet when you’re done.”

When it comes to popular plasma TVs, however, not everyone tucks them away. “With this resurgence of flat-screen TVs, people want to see what they’re putting all this money into,” says Vaughan. The most common way of mounting flat screens is above a fireplace, taking the place of a family portrait on the mantel. Even if a TV screen is showcased, add-on components such as the DVD player, digital video recorder and cable box can be concealed in a cabinet or closet. Infrared sensors can operate controls through wooden doors. And wall panels can be customized throughout the house to access controls anywhere, whether streaming music from floor to floor or watching different TV programs in different rooms.

Whether you tuck away your gear or treat it as a work of art, Vaughan says, “Get a universal remote.” Because when you spend time and money on equipment and custom installation, being able to actually turn on the TV lets you reap the high-tech rewards of a job well done.