Here are 5 key benefits for adding ceiling speakers in your home!
We get loads of you getting in touch trying to decide if ceiling speakers are the right choice for your home and although we have got a full ceiling speaker series for beginners on our channel, that is getting a bit old now so we’re upgrading our content for you. We thought we’d kick off with the benefits to help you know whether ceiling speakers are worth considering but do let us know what other videos you’d find helpful.
5. Clean aesthetic
Ok, let’s kick off with number five, and that is the clean aesthetic you get from ceiling speakers. There’s no denying how nice ceiling speakers can look once they’re installed in the ceiling. All you see is a clean white grill, which is usually spray-paintable so you can match the colour perfectly with your ceiling, so you and your guests will hardly notice the speaker is even there. All the magic is happening behind your ceiling and out of the way.
Essentially, ceiling speakers don’t take anything away from the room. Music will fit right into the background without you noticing, a bit like walking into a shop or a restaurant and you never really notice where the music is coming from. So if you’re trying to retain a clean, minimalistic finish in your room, ceiling speakers can really help here.
4. Space Saver & no clutter
Benefit number 4 continues on from this and that is how much space you save from having your speakers in the ceiling and the lack of wires and clutter you therefore get. For this reason, ceiling speakers are well suited to family homes where you might be worried about kids knocking over speakers, things like that.
On the whole, floorstanding speakers, bookshelf speakers those kinds of things need a dedicated space in your home and can take up quite a bit of space. Not to mention the stress and worry that they could get knocked over when you’ve got young ones or even dogs running around. So keeping your speakers up in the ceiling eradicates this issue.
3. Flexible positioning & more immersive
Number 3 is the freedom of positioning you have for ceiling speakers vs wireless speakers. Your ceiling almost acts as a completely blank canvas, if we exclude lighting, skylights and that sort of thing. This means you can direct the sound to the room’s most habitable areas and create a really nice stereo sound. An example would be over a kitchen island that we’re seeing a lot more commonly now. You can have a pair over each side of the kitchen island to create a nice stereo experience. For a wireless speaker, as they are usually front directional, your experience will be significantly affected by where you’re sitting in the room. With ceiling speakers, you can put them in the perfect place in your room and as the drivers face downwards into the room, everyone gets a nice balanced sound throughout the space.
A quick little tip as well is to look for a model of ceiling speaker that has either pivotable drivers or pivotable tweeters where you can actually direct the sound to where you want it to go. On the whole, this means you can actually get more immersion from your ceiling speakers. You can choose to position them exactly where you want in the room to have maximum impact and you can also get ceiling speakers with a wide dispersion to fill more of the space.
2. Good option for rear surround sound speakers
Onto number 2 and this is that ceiling speakers can be a great option for rears in a home cinema setup. We often see people who don’t want to have their speakers on the wall behind their seating area or don’t have the space for speakers on a floorstand for example. Therefore putting the rears up in the ceiling can be the perfect solution for this. Getting the surround sound from overhead also further adds to the immersion when you’re watching movies with that feeling of height channels almost like you’re watching it at the cinema. There will be some people who prefer the experience of in-wall or floor mounted surrounds but if they aren’t practical then putting your surrounds up in the ceiling is definitely a solid option. - get up from couch
1. Flexibility - lots of choice at lots of different price points
And finally, the number 1 benefit of in-ceiling speakers is the flexibility you get and I’m talking about the broad range of models available at a complete variety of costs so there really is something out there for everyone. There are options for ambient background listening right up to high end hifi quality speakers. Of course, with most ceiling speakers you do need to factor in the cost of the amp but again you’ve got a lot of choice there to find the best option for you and your setup.
I think people are always a bit cautious of ceiling speakers as they think it’s going to be very expensive and yes, there are options for those with a much bigger budget. However, there are setups available for a more accessible cost. For example, you can usually install multiple pairs of speakers on the same Amp, even if it’s single zone like the Sonos Amp. This works very well in open plan spaces like a kitchen diner where you won’t ever be having different music played at the same time. Obviously, all Amps have a maximum number of speakers you can install on it so don’t go installing 20 speakers on the same Amp. You can even use things like speaker switches where you might have an indoor zone and an outdoor zone. Instead of installing another Amp, you can install a speaker switch to simply turn on and off one of the zones.
Active ceiling speakers
Another massive cost-saving method would be to swap out passive speakers for active speakers and what I mean by passive speakers are speakers that require a separate amplifier to power them with speaker cable. Active, on the other hand, don’t need a separate amplifier and instead just plug into mains power.
The market leader of active ceiling speakers is a brand called Lithe Audio. There are Bluetooth and WiFi options available so if you just want to use Bluetooth and not have to worry about using an app, these are perfect or if you like the idea of grouping multiple speakers together around your home, this is where WiFi is beneficial as that can be controlled over an app.
Of course, everyone's properties are going to be different and everyone’s requirements are going to be different so do get in touch with us if you’re based in the UK and you’d like some help with making your budget go as far as possible in your ceiling speaker project. Our ceiling speaker experts are always happy to have a chat and I’ll link our design service below for you.
So if this video has helped make your mind up and you’re thinking about how they might all be set up, do check out our other videos - here’s a playlist we think you’ll find handy, here’s a video we think you'll enjoy and here’s us if you’ve not subscribed yet and want to catch our upcoming ceiling speaker content. That’s all for today, thanks for watching and catch you next time!
