How To Hide Your Flat Screen TV in Plain Site

I don’t yet have one of those super-duper big screen HD TVs for my house yet mostly because I don’t yet have a place to really put it. Right now I just have a 20 year old particleboard entertainment center along a large empty wall in my living room. I’m thinking about designing some built-in cabinets for that area, but I like the idea of “hiding” my HD TV when it isn’t in use so my living room can be both a formal room with no TV and an informal room when I have the TV on.

It turns out there are a lot of cool options available that will help me have my HD TV and hide it, too.

Picturehouse Cabinet’s Plasma TV Fireplace - This is pretty darn cool and it’s definitely at the top of my list for neat ways to hide a big screen TV. It’s an electric fireplace cabinet with a lift built into it which raises up when you want to watch TV and sinks back down into the fireplace (out of site and safe) when you don’t want to see the television. Each fireplace is made of solid wood and has a host of great luxury features include a remote control for the lift and the fireplace, hidden wires, and Smooth-Glide operation so you can still decorate your mantle. This free-standing fireplace requires no flu, can hold a TV up to 50″ in size and serves as a unique focal point and conversation piece! They really do have a lot of different fireplace styles, so they almost definitely have one that will fit your decor. They’re from Britain and they’re not cheap.

Media Decor Moving Art and Media Mirror - Media Decor has two different options available to hide that wall-mounted flat panel TV. They manufacture frames which you put around your TV that mask the television when it is not in use. The Moving Art actually has a piece of artwork scroll down over your TV when it isn’t in use. They have a wide selection of artworks you can choose from or you can even submit your own custom piece of art. The Media-Mirrors are really pretty amazing looking. It’s sort of like a high-tech two-way mirror over your TV, but there’s more to it. They use “beam splitter” technology which means the mirror has a “high efficiency dielectric coating designed to transmit the TV picture at maximum brightness and reflect like a mirror when the TV is off.” These incredibly cool flat TV covers come with a variety of frames and customization options. They even have a version which rolls up the artwork and then slides out the TV out from the frame.

MK1 Studios Plasma TV Underbed Lift - So maybe you like to watch TV in bed but don’t really have anyplace to put that 50″ Plasma screen. That’s not a problem anymore with this underbed lift. This system actually fit around and under the bed and stores the TV completely out of view under the bed until you want to watch it. Then it lifts out from under the special bed frame and flips around for your viewing pleasure. The entire system is remote controlled and from what I can tell this is one heavy-duty lift system. The lift takes about 35 seconds to deploy from under the bed and allows you to rotate the screen so you could watch it from anywhere in the room, not just from the bed. They can fit a 50″ flatscreen TV under a king size bed.

Frontgate Reversible Media Center - This is the cheapest of the options, but it’s also no longer available according to Frontgate’s website. This bookcase actually slides out and then turns around on a platter to reveal a wide screen TV. So you can impress your girlfriend’s parents with your leather-bound editions of Shakespeare and then chill with the guys and watch NASCAR two hours later. As far as I can tell this isn’t being made anymore mostly because it was fairly expensive for a cherry veneer product that you had to manually turn around.

So it looks like I have some options. I’m not sure if I can actually afford any of them, but it’s fun to dream and see what’s available! It also makes the idea of building my own method for hiding a flat screen TV a good idea for a home improvement project that I’ll have to plan out sometime soon.