Flooring For A Media Room

Q: What is the best option for media room flooring? My husband wants hardwoods but we’ve been told carpet is best for a media room with surround sound.
Thank you,
Denise
A: Hard surface flooring can cause a bit of an echo in a home theater or media room. Carpet is great at insulating some of this sound, but there are a few option you have to reduce this from a hard surface floor.
If you want hardwood, look into a good floating product and install cork underlayment under it. Cork has natural acoustic insulating qualities which will help prevent a loss in audio quality in your media room. Now if you want to take this one step further you can use cork flooring. This will put the insulator directly at the top layer of your flooring. This will help to retain sound quality very similar if not on par with any carpet installation. As a note, cork is actually used in many sound booths to insulate sound and prevent outside noise from disrupting audio quality.
Now carpet will be comfortable and great at insulating sound will also work excellently in your media room. In the end it will be a matter of what you want your room to look like. Hardwood can be done with success, but for best result you will want a floating floor with cork underlayment.