[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":15},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$fKqcH0Ye-QbqeT4X6cCDxImm7aqQAErodDIr4jHhK6mE":3},{"title":4,"content":5,"excerpt":6,"body":5,"readTime":7,"author":8,"thumbnail":9,"thumbnailVersion":10,"created_at":11,"updated_at":12,"id":13,"body_html":14},"Whole-House Audio: Which Rooms Need Speakers, Which Don't","Whole-house audio is the line on a smart-home quote that gets cut first and regretted most — in both directions. People pay for rooms they will never turn on, and skip the rooms they live in.\n\nThere is a pattern we have watched play out in houses for twenty-seven years, and almost nobody sees it coming. People buy audio for the house they picture in their head. Then they live in a different house.\n\nThe rooms that get speakers are the ones you imagine yourself standing in — the grand entrance, the dining room set for a holiday, the bedroom where you wake up gently to music. The rooms you actually spend your life in get skipped, because when you are standing in a half-framed house looking at a plan, they do not feel special enough to spend money on.\n\nHere is the honest version, from the houses rather than the brochure: which rooms earn their speakers, which four never get used, and what it costs to get it right.\n\n## The four rooms you will never turn on\n\n### The foyer — and this is the big one\n\nIf your house has a foyer, there is a good chance somebody will suggest putting music in it. The reasoning is always the same: it is the first thing people experience, so it should make an impression.\n\nIt never gets turned on. Not occasionally — essentially never.\n\nThink about what a foyer is for. You are in it for eleven seconds on the way to somewhere else. When you have guests, everyone moves through it into the room where the party is, and that is where the music belongs. In twenty-seven years, the foyer is the single most reliably wasted zone in a house.\n\nIf you have a foyer and a formal room beside it, put the music in the room beside it.\n\n### Guest bedrooms — absolutely not\n\nThis one is worth understanding, because the reason is not about the room. It is about the guest.\n\nYour guest does not want to turn on your music. They do not want to figure out your system, they do not want to touch a keypad they have never seen, and they very much do not want to push a button and have something happen in a room that is not theirs. They will not fight with it. They will sit quietly and use their phone.\n\nSpeakers in a guest room are for the homeowner's imagination, not the guest's comfort.\n\n### The formal dining room\n\nThis one sounds wrong until you have watched it. Music at Thanksgiving dinner — of course, that sounds lovely.\n\nBut consider when a genuinely formal dining room actually gets used. It is used when there are a lot of people around the table, and all of them are talking. Music underneath twelve people having four conversations is not atmosphere, it is another thing to talk over. So it gets turned down, and then off.\n\nCasual dining, the everyday table off the kitchen, is a different story — that one lives on the kitchen zone and it earns its keep.\n\n### The master bedroom — genuinely borderline\n\nWe will be straight about this one, because it depends on you.\n\nSome people do wake up to music, and for them it is one of the nicest things a system does. But it is very few people. Most people wake up to an alarm, and an alarm is on a phone.\n\nIf you know you are a person who plays music while getting dressed, put it in. If you are not certain, you are probably not. It is the one room on this list where we would tell you to be honest with yourself rather than take a rule.\n\n## The three rooms you will wish you had done\n\n### The kitchen — number one, and it is not close\n\nEverybody lives in the kitchen. Not in the abstract — literally. You are not in there for twenty seconds. You are in there making a meal, cleaning up after a meal, standing at the island talking to whoever else is home, doing homework at the counter, unpacking groceries.\n\nAudio in a kitchen gets used every single day, in a way audio in a foyer never will. If you are going to spend money on exactly one zone in a house, this is it.\n\n### The master bathroom\n\nThis is the second most common regret, and it is about a routine rather than a room.\n\nPeople get up, shower, and get ready. That is twenty to forty minutes with your hands busy and your attention free — which is exactly when people want something on. Music, the news, a podcast.\n\nThere is one exception worth naming. A lot of people put a television in the master bath, usually so they can have the morning news on. If there is a TV in there, audio is much less critical. If there is not, this is a room to add.\n\n### The garage — the one nobody predicts\n\nThis is the room people miss more than they would ever guess.\n\nIt depends on the person, but a lot of people work out in the garage. Straightening it up, changing the oil, working on a project, doing whatever needs doing on a Saturday. And when somebody is out there for two hours with their hands dirty, they want tunes on.\n\nNobody puts it on the plan. A good number of people ask for it afterwards.\n\n## The kitchen detail nobody plans for\n\nWhile we are in the kitchen, here is something that is easy to accommodate during construction and annoying afterwards.\n\nPeople want a tablet in the kitchen. Not for the home system particularly — for recipes. They want to prop something up, keep a recipe on the screen, and cook.\n\nWhat it actually needs is almost nothing: **power in the right spot.** That is the whole requirement, and it costs nothing to add while a wall is open.\n\nBut there is a better way to do it than the obvious one. Most of the time you do not want a tablet living on the counter — counter space is the thing you never have enough of, and a tablet lying flat gets splashed and shoved aside. A bracket that mounts under the upper cabinets and swings up out of the way works far better. It tucks flat under the cabinet when you are not using it, and when you are ready to cook you flip it down, turn it toward you, and it is exactly where you need it.\n\nYou do not have to do it that way. But if you are planning a kitchen and someone asks where the tablet goes, that is the answer worth knowing.\n\n## Why any of this matters\n\nWire is cheap while a wall is open and expensive once it is closed. That is the entire economics of this decision.\n\nNobody regrets the money they spent on the kitchen. Plenty of people regret the foyer — not because the equipment was expensive, but because the same money would have covered the garage and the master bath, and those would have been used every week for twenty years.\n\nSo when somebody hands you a plan with speaker locations on it, the question is not \"does this room deserve music.\" It is **\"will I be standing in this room, with my hands busy, wanting something on?\"**\n\nThat question gets you the kitchen, the bathroom and the garage every time. And it never once gets you the foyer.\n\n## If the house is already finished\n\nNone of this is only for new construction. If the walls are already closed, the answer is usually different hardware rather than no answer — and the room you actually want is still the room you actually want.\n\nThat is the part we are good at: figuring out what a finished house can do without tearing it apart, and then making it work and keeping it working. If you have a system already, or you are looking at a plan and wondering which of these lines to keep, that is a conversation worth having before the drywall goes up.","27 years of installs: the foyer never gets turned on, the kitchen gets missed. Which rooms earn their speakers, which four waste the money, and what it costs.","6 min read","@IxomeExpert","\u002Fthumbnails\u002Farticle_51.webp","20260813","2026-08-13T19:38:34-04:00","2026-09-04T14:20:21+00:00",51,"\u003Cp>Whole-house audio is the line on a smart-home quote that gets cut first and regretted most — in both directions. People pay for rooms they will never turn on, and skip the rooms they live in.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There is a pattern we have watched play out in houses for twenty-seven years, and almost nobody sees it coming. People buy audio for the house they picture in their head. Then they live in a different house.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The rooms that get speakers are the ones you imagine yourself standing in — the grand entrance, the dining room set for a holiday, the bedroom where you wake up gently to music. The rooms you actually spend your life in get skipped, because when you are standing in a half-framed house looking at a plan, they do not feel special enough to spend money on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Here is the honest version, from the houses rather than the brochure: which rooms earn their speakers, which four never get used, and what it costs to get it right.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>The four rooms you will never turn on\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Ch3>The foyer — and this is the big one\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>If your house has a foyer, there is a good chance somebody will suggest putting music in it. The reasoning is always the same: it is the first thing people experience, so it should make an impression.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It never gets turned on. Not occasionally — essentially never.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Think about what a foyer is for. You are in it for eleven seconds on the way to somewhere else. When you have guests, everyone moves through it into the room where the party is, and that is where the music belongs. In twenty-seven years, the foyer is the single most reliably wasted zone in a house.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If you have a foyer and a formal room beside it, put the music in the room beside it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch3>Guest bedrooms — absolutely not\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>This one is worth understanding, because the reason is not about the room. It is about the guest.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Your guest does not want to turn on your music. They do not want to figure out your system, they do not want to touch a keypad they have never seen, and they very much do not want to push a button and have something happen in a room that is not theirs. They will not fight with it. They will sit quietly and use their phone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Speakers in a guest room are for the homeowner's imagination, not the guest's comfort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch3>The formal dining room\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>This one sounds wrong until you have watched it. Music at Thanksgiving dinner — of course, that sounds lovely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But consider when a genuinely formal dining room actually gets used. It is used when there are a lot of people around the table, and all of them are talking. Music underneath twelve people having four conversations is not atmosphere, it is another thing to talk over. So it gets turned down, and then off.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Casual dining, the everyday table off the kitchen, is a different story — that one lives on the kitchen zone and it earns its keep.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch3>The master bedroom — genuinely borderline\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>We will be straight about this one, because it depends on you.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some people do wake up to music, and for them it is one of the nicest things a system does. But it is very few people. Most people wake up to an alarm, and an alarm is on a phone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If you know you are a person who plays music while getting dressed, put it in. If you are not certain, you are probably not. It is the one room on this list where we would tell you to be honest with yourself rather than take a rule.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>The three rooms you will wish you had done\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Ch3>The kitchen — number one, and it is not close\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>Everybody lives in the kitchen. Not in the abstract — literally. You are not in there for twenty seconds. You are in there making a meal, cleaning up after a meal, standing at the island talking to whoever else is home, doing homework at the counter, unpacking groceries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Audio in a kitchen gets used every single day, in a way audio in a foyer never will. If you are going to spend money on exactly one zone in a house, this is it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch3>The master bathroom\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>This is the second most common regret, and it is about a routine rather than a room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People get up, shower, and get ready. That is twenty to forty minutes with your hands busy and your attention free — which is exactly when people want something on. Music, the news, a podcast.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There is one exception worth naming. A lot of people put a television in the master bath, usually so they can have the morning news on. If there is a TV in there, audio is much less critical. If there is not, this is a room to add.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch3>The garage — the one nobody predicts\u003C\u002Fh3>\n\u003Cp>This is the room people miss more than they would ever guess.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It depends on the person, but a lot of people work out in the garage. Straightening it up, changing the oil, working on a project, doing whatever needs doing on a Saturday. And when somebody is out there for two hours with their hands dirty, they want tunes on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nobody puts it on the plan. A good number of people ask for it afterwards.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>The kitchen detail nobody plans for\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>While we are in the kitchen, here is something that is easy to accommodate during construction and annoying afterwards.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People want a tablet in the kitchen. Not for the home system particularly — for recipes. They want to prop something up, keep a recipe on the screen, and cook.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What it actually needs is almost nothing: \u003Cstrong>power in the right spot.\u003C\u002Fstrong> That is the whole requirement, and it costs nothing to add while a wall is open.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But there is a better way to do it than the obvious one. Most of the time you do not want a tablet living on the counter — counter space is the thing you never have enough of, and a tablet lying flat gets splashed and shoved aside. A bracket that mounts under the upper cabinets and swings up out of the way works far better. It tucks flat under the cabinet when you are not using it, and when you are ready to cook you flip it down, turn it toward you, and it is exactly where you need it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>You do not have to do it that way. But if you are planning a kitchen and someone asks where the tablet goes, that is the answer worth knowing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>Why any of this matters\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>Wire is cheap while a wall is open and expensive once it is closed. That is the entire economics of this decision.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nobody regrets the money they spent on the kitchen. Plenty of people regret the foyer — not because the equipment was expensive, but because the same money would have covered the garage and the master bath, and those would have been used every week for twenty years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So when somebody hands you a plan with speaker locations on it, the question is not "does this room deserve music." It is \u003Cstrong>"will I be standing in this room, with my hands busy, wanting something on?"\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That question gets you the kitchen, the bathroom and the garage every time. And it never once gets you the foyer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Ch2>If the house is already finished\u003C\u002Fh2>\n\u003Cp>None of this is only for new construction. If the walls are already closed, the answer is usually different hardware rather than no answer — and the room you actually want is still the room you actually want.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That is the part we are good at: figuring out what a finished house can do without tearing it apart, and then making it work and keeping it working. If you have a system already, or you are looking at a plan and wondering which of these lines to keep, that is a conversation worth having before the drywall goes up.\u003C\u002Fp>\n",1789078239774]