Choosing the right Television Stand.

Television stands are large items of furniture and choosing the right one is essential to the look and feel of your room. There are a number of points to consider when purchasing a new TV stand, the first being what sort of TV do you have and what size is it? An LCD TV will require a much smaller stand than the older CRT type TV’s. Lcd television stands will therefore not be as deep as a CRT TV stand.

What is the feel of your room, is it a soft feel with muted colours and woods, or is it a harder edgy feeling room with a functional feel to it? You need to make sure that you get the stand that matches your room, a more traditional wooden TV stand may be better for the first example, whereas a metal and glass stand would be suited to the more modern room. You also need to ask your self where will your TV stand go, for example would a corner television stand be more appropriate? Corner television stands to tend to be very deep, but then you do get a lot of storage with them.

When choosing your stand you also need to think about what you want to store with your TV – do you have a DVD player, VCR or other set top boxes that need to be stored with it. Do you have some dvd’s that could be stored in a cabinet alongside your TV. Many TV cabinets will come with doors or drawers underneath it in order to store such items; make sure thought that it will fit all of your equipment in. Pay particular attention to the depth of the cabinet if you intend to keep an AV amplifier in it, these amps in general are taller than your standard DVD player and require more room at the rear of them for all of the cables that go in to them.

On that note, if you do intend to keep a lot of electronic equipment in your cupboard then you should look for a standard that has some form of cable management built in to. Whether it be a couple of clips on the back of it or something more sophisticated it will help organise the clutter of wires going in to the cabinet. A further point to consider is ventilation, particularly if you are keeping an amplifier in the cabinet. Good ventilation is critical to prevent your amplifier overheating and switching it’s self off, or at worst over heating and permanently damaging its self. Even if you want a TV stand with doors on it to hide the equipment below make sure that there is either no back on the cabinet, that there is adequate room all around the amp to let air flow and that there some other access for air to get in to the cabinet.

Aside from the functional aspects, there are the aesthetic aspects of the television stand to consider. TV stands come in a bewildering array of materials and colours. You can get glass, plastic, real wood, wood veneer and laminate stands. Your budget will determine what material you go for, but it is fair to say that a good wood veneer cabinet looks as good as a real wood cabinet. The difference will be in how long it lasts, it is unlikely that the wood veneer cabinet will last as long a real wood stand. The veneer usually sandwiches a layer of particle board or chip board and this is particularly susceptible to damp and humid conditions.

Not everyone want to have their TV on show though, for many people the TV is not a focal point in there living room and the may want to hide it. If this is the case you can find TV cabinets with doors on them, either sliding or hinged. Unless you have a very big room though a TV stand with door can look very imposing in term of the size of it. If you don’t mind having your TV on show though but you have a smaller room then perhaps a glass or other transparent material would be the best solution for you. Having a clear stand visually takes up less space and will make your room look a lot larger. You may think that you can only have a glass stand if you have an LCD TV, but this is not the case. Toughened glass will take a staggering amount of weight, it’s not cheap though, but it may be the ideal solution. I mentioned earlier about some form of cable management and this is particularly important if you do decide that a transparent TV stand is for you, there will be no where to ‘hide’ all of the cables.

With TV stands being available to easily buy online and most retailers having excellent return policies there is no reason why you have to be limited to your local stores. You can get the ideal TV stand you want from almost anywhere in the world.