I custom-built a super-tidy TV and hi-fi setup — here are 5 mistakes you can avoid based on my experience

When I moved into my new apartment, I wanted my TV setup to feel a bit more deliberate than the usual rented home arrangement of a screen on a TV bench, a soundbar, and a mess of cables doing their best.

So, with help from family, I built a custom small-scale Tv, soundbar and hi-fi setup designed to fit the space properly, hiding cables and looking cleaner day-to-day.

I've always been happy with how it turned out, but living with it taught me something that product pages and showroom photos do not: the best setup is not always the one that looks the neatest on day one.

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In a smaller home like mine, the choices that matter most are usually the practical ones: how easy it is to reach a cable, how many remotes you need to juggle, and so on.

Some of those lessons came from getting things right, and some came from learning the hard way. Either way, they are useful if you are trying to build a cleaner, smarter TV setup without turning your living room into a full-time AV project.

What's my setup?

My custom TV setup was not a full from-scratch build so much as an adaptation of what was already there.

We used a buyable record shelf as the base, then added a long wooden top and a new support leg to create one continuous unit for the TV, turntable, storage, and desk space.

The whole thing was shaped around the built-in white shelving already in the flat, which meant the room itself dictated a lot of the design.

All of this was accomplished on the day I moved in and the day after, so it was a tight — and very stressful — timeframe, which is an element of the project that I definitely don't recommend unless absolutely necessary.

1. Leave some cable slack and strain relief

One of the least glamorous lessons was also one of the most useful: do not make your cable runs so neat that they become a pain to live with.

In my setup, once everything was tucked away and routed through the furniture properly, even small changes became more annoying than I’d expected, albeit with the advantage of being nicer to look at.

In a smaller flat, where the TV stand is likely to sit close to the wall and every inch matters, leaving a bit of slack behind the screen and around your devices makes a real difference.

2. eARC is brilliant until it isn’t

For me, HDMI ARC was one of the best parts of the whole setup. Running a soundbar through my Samsung TV’s eARC port helped cut down the clutter straight away, because it meant simpler audio, fewer visible connections, and less dependence on a pile of remotes.

The catch is that eARC still relies on everything in the chain behaving itself. HDMI handshakes, quirks with HDMI-CEC control system it uses, and the occasional audio oddity can turn a tidy one-cable solution into something that feels strangely temperamental.

I still think it is well worth prioritizing, especially with one of the best soundbars, but it is smarter to treat it as part of the system that you might need to play with sometimes, not a magic solution you can set and forget.

3. Don’t chase 'flush to the wall'

One thing I would be more relaxed about next time is how close the TV sits to the wall, or to whatever is supporting it.

In my experience, it's easy to fixate on that super-slim, ultra-neat look – especially if you're wall-mounting — but in real life it can create more problems than it solves.

In a smaller space, a bit of extra space behind the screen makes it much easier to reach ports, route cables neatly, and make changes without turning a simple job into a frustrating one.

And if you're wall-mounting, remember that a fancy mount that keeps the TV flush to the wall will look amazing, but a thicker mount (especially that moves) will make fixing problems way easier.

4. Kill the remote pile

A home theater setup can look clean and still feel annoying to use, and remotes are a big part of that.

One thing I appreciated with my own system was how much better it felt once I was not constantly juggling controls just to switch inputs or adjust the volume.

It is worth thinking about this when you're planning what you're going to include in your setup.

A soundbar with solid eARC support, a streaming device with a good remote, or a universal remote can make a bigger difference than another spec upgrade you only notice occasionally.

5. Plan for the day you move out

The final lesson only really clicked afterwards: a setup does not just need to work while you live with it, it needs to be removable without becoming a nightmare.

In a rented flat, it is very easy to make something feel brilliantly custom in the moment, then discover later that it only really works in that one exact room.

Removable cable management rather than built-in, furniture that can be reused in a different layout, and mounts or accessories that do not leave you with loads to undo all make far more sense in the long run.

A good setup should suit your space now, but it should not punish you for eventually leaving it. I'm glad I'm staying put for the foreseeable future.