arts & entertainment
Game rooms are the
new home hub spaces
Roomcue with a
Games
A counter or bar is a
great place for spectators
to congregate in a game
room to watch the action.
By Dan Daley
WHEN CRAIG AND DESIREÉ Griffiths
moved into their new home in an Atlanta
suburb, Desireé says, the pool table went in
before the furniture. “The game room is the
social hub of the home,” she says of the
Rocket Diner, the family’s name for their
1950s-themed basement game room, which
also holds a pinball machine and dartboard,
and is used to host birthday parties for their
8-year-old daughter, Marisol, and her
friends. “What I love most is how a game
room encourages us to spend more family
time together.”
The growing sophistication of video
games and the plummeting costs for electronics such as flat-screen LCDs and video game
consoles (both Sony and Microsoft cut the
prices on their popular consoles by about a
third this year) produced a cornucopia of electronic games over the past two decades; it’s not
unusual for a household to own two or three
major video game consoles, as well as scores of
game cartridges for them. And plenty of
“analog-era” games remain popular, including
full-size and scaled-down pool tables, air
hockey tables and foosball, as well as hundreds
of board games from checkers to Monopoly,
which tend to migrate around the house,
winding up wherever they were last played.
Space, the final frontier
The dedicated game room brings order to
this playful chaos. How well that space is
planned is important to maximize its use and
enjoyment. Start with the amount of space
you can dedicate to gaming. If it’s just going to
be video games, a typical spare bedroom is
fine, with the video monitor positioned against
a wall and some seating behind the players’
positions. If it’s going to be a multi-game environment, you may need to reach into the
basement for more space. For instance, a 5-by-
10-foot pool table requires a space 12 feet 8
inches by 17 feet 4 inches to allow the players
to extend their cues. (You can find great tools
for estimating billiards space at www.fgbrad
leys.com/plan_room.html.)
Interior décor
Use warm but vibrant colors for walls,
says DeAnna Radaj, an interior designer and
owner of Bante Design LLC in Milwaukee,
who’s studied the effect of colors on human
physiology. “Warm colors increase blood
pressure and body temperature,” she says.
“Yellow is perfect—it’s the hardest color for
your eye to break down, so it increases mental agility and concentration.”
Game rooms are high-activity places, so
good-looking commercial carpeting is the
best bet to be both durable and inviting to sit
on; darker colors help hide stains. Carpeting
also helps hold the noise level down, and so
do cork wall panels. These panels come in a
variety of colors and can be arranged around
the room in patterns, doubling as sound
absorbers and bulletin boards on which to
post pictures and high-score bragging rights.
JOE SCHMIEDER
Pick a theme
Themed rooms can intensify the game
experience—as long as everyone agrees on
the theme. There are plenty to choose from:
favorite sports teams, films, music and more.
While one Nashville family painted their
entire game room orange and white, in honor
of the University of Tennessee football team,
expressing a theme can be easily accomplished
The Costco Connection
Setting up a game room? You’ll find
video game consoles, video games,
arcade games, furniture for multimedia,
rocker chairs, sports memorabilia
and more at Costco and Costco.com.
JUPITER IMAGES
