The bonus room has already evolved from the playroom since we moved in. I quickly realized that it was far too central to have toys emptied on the floor, so we swapped the girls playroom where the theatre room was going to be. Funny how much has changed since we first pictured our family living in this house. Now that our Charly sectional and Frame TV have a home, we’ve been spending all of our time in there as a family–hanging out, watching shows, and chatting before the day is over. In fact, we spend more time in this space than any other room in the house! It’s shocking in a good way. I never expected it and we love the light and natural gathering space. We even tucked the girls computers in the corner. It’s so central and an awesome room for our family.

I’ve been envisioning installing paneling and trim on the floors and ceiling, all painted in a mid-toned, dusty blue and I’m itching to get things rolling (pun anyone?). But before I can get my hands on a paint brush though, we’re tackling a small project that in my opinion, is non-optional if you’re mounting a TV to a wall.

My honest thoughts? Unless you’re setting your TV on a media console, hiding your cords is a MUST. Come at me! Okay but in all seriousness, messy cords dangling below a beautiful big screen, are an eye sore, and distracting. We all agreed the best place to hang our TV in this room was the little box-of-a-wall in between the two windows. It’s a little lower than where we would typically hang it, but it’s actually working really well and honestly I’m already thinking it needs to be a tad lower–perfectly at eye level. The cords need to go though and we’ve been brainstorming all the ways we to do that. The good news is, there’s options and we thought we might share a few of them.

1. Move the outlet to behind the tv.

When we moved into our last house, I think this is what they were trying to do in our family room except the plug was too high. *face palm* But it can be really effective when done correctly!

(see all the sources here!)

This is the trickiest option, and might even require you to hire it out to an electrician but outlets can be moved! Relatively easily if they are straight up and down and don’t have to go through any studs. If you move the outlet so that your cord can plug in right behind where the tv is mounted, then everything gets hidden behind the tv. For our case, we will be moving the plug completely so that the tv will be the only visible thing on this wall and look even more like art.

2. Channel the cords to a different outlet

Perfect for any beginning DIYer, channeling the cords by cutting a hole behind the TV and down to an outlet below is an easy option if you have a nearby outlet you can thread your cords to. This is the route to go if you have an outlet already existing below your tv and you will have something in front of that outlet hiding it. But it does require some simple tools! This is how we did it in our last bedroom (really easy!)

We actually did a video tutorial of this in our Modern Cottage house that you can watch here!

3. Paintable channeling

Where are my renters at? This is the solution for you! If you weren’t aware, you can buy channeling that you thread your cords through, stick it on the wall, and you can even paint over it to match the color of the wall. We used this option in our first apartment!

4. Don’t mount it at all.

Not all TVs need to be mounted on the wall. There’s nothing wrong with setting a TV on a media cabinet, especially if you don’t have the time or know how to hide those sneaky cords. In fact–I dare say if you aren’t going to hide the cords, I wouldn’t mount it.

Because we’re going to be removing the plug entirely here (and it’s daisy-chained–or connected to all of the other outlets in the room)–we’ll bring in an electrician for the job. In the meantime we took to photoshop to see what it would look like… Let’s just say we got a little carried away.

Dreamy, right?!