How-To · August 2026
DESIGN YOUR OWN MEDIA WALL: A WALK-THROUGH OF OUR FREE DESIGN STUDIO
You know the wall you want — recessed TV, a linear fireplace, lit niches, maybe wood slat or stone. Now there's a tool where you draw it yourself, on a photo of your own living room, and we price exactly what you drew.
What The Design Studio Is
The Design Studio is the same professional tool we use to design media walls for real jobs — opened up so you can use it too. It's not a mood board and it's not a questionnaire: it's a canvas that works in real inches. A 75″ TV on the canvas is the size a 75″ TV actually is. A niche you draw 14 inches wide gets framed 14 inches wide.
Three things to know before you start:
- It's free, with no obligation. Nothing is booked and nothing is charged. Design for ten minutes or three evenings.
- You won't see any prices in the tool. That's deliberate — more on why at the end.
- Your design saves automatically on your device. Close the tab, come back later, pick up where you left off.
Works on a phone, but a tablet or computer gives you more room to drag things around.
Step 1: Start With Your Wall
Go to tvserviceschicago.com/design. You'll be asked three things: how wide the wall is, how tall your ceiling is, and what size TV you have (or want). Rough numbers are fine — pace it off if you don't have a tape measure handy. Press Start designing and your canvas opens with the wall drawn to scale and the TV already on it.
Don't overthink this step. Everything, including the wall size itself, can be changed later — and before anything gets built, we measure the real wall ourselves.
Step 2: Design On The Canvas
This is the fun part. The screen has three areas: a toolbar across the top, the wall in the middle, and an inspector panel with the details of whatever you've selected.
Moving and sizing things
Tap or click anything to select it, then drag it around the wall. Drag the corner handles to resize. As you drag, the canvas snaps to the center of the wall and to the edges of other pieces, and shows you live measurements — the exact gap between the TV and the fireplace, how far a niche sits from the edge. Arrow keys nudge one inch at a time; there's an undo button (and ⌘Z) for everything.
Adding the good stuff
The Add button is where the wall becomes a media wall:
- Linear electric fireplace — 50″ to 100″ sizes. Drag it under the TV where it belongs.
- Display niches — the lit recessed boxes that flank the TV in every photo you've saved. Add them individually or as matching banks on both sides, then pick the lighting color per niche — warm white, or any accent color if you want the full RGBW look.
- Shelf columns and base cabinetry — built-in storage that gets shop-built for your wall.
- A hearth bench, a soundbar, wood slat / tile / stone finishes — select the wall itself to change the finish material and colors.
Start with the big three — TV, fireplace, niches — and get their spacing right before you add anything else. The select-and-center buttons in the toolbar will put the TV and fireplace dead center in one click, and centered symmetry is what makes a media wall read “custom built” instead of “assembled.”
Step 3: See It On Your Own Wall
This is the part people send to their group chat. Open the Your wall photo step and take (or upload) a photo of the actual wall in your home. Then drag the four gold corner markers onto the corners of your wall in the photo.
Now open Before / after: your design is composited onto your real room, in perspective, with a slider you drag to sweep between the wall you have and the wall you designed. Lights on, your paint colors, your floor — it's your living room with the media wall in it.
Shoot the photo standing square to the wall, in daylight, with the whole wall in frame — corners included. The straighter the photo, the more convincing the preview.
Step 4: Send It In For Your Estimate
When the design looks like the wall you want, open Get my estimate, add your name and phone number (email and address help too), and send it. Your actual design — every dimension, every niche, the finish, the lighting — comes straight to us. No retyping, no “describe your project” box.
Here's what happens next:
- We review the design you drew — the real geometry, not a summary of it.
- We check the things a tool can't know: what's behind your drywall, whether the fireplace needs a dedicated circuit, and the fireplace manufacturer's actual installation specs. We never frame an opening from an advertised size — the rough opening comes from the manual, always.
- You get your estimate — the first number you see, priced from your actual design. For a firm quote, we come measure the wall.
And your design stays editable the whole time — keep refining it while you wait.
Why There Are No Prices In The Tool
Because a number generated by software from a drawing would be a guess dressed up as a promise. Every wall hides its own surprises — plaster over brick, a joist where a niche wants to be, a panel that can't take one more circuit — and the contractor trick of quoting low from a form and “adjusting” later is exactly what we refuse to do. So the Studio does design, and pricing waits until a person has looked at your actual design. The first number you get is one we'll stand behind.
Want a ballpark right now instead? That exists too: the quick estimator asks six questions and shows a live price range with Good / Better / Best options as you answer. Plenty of people start there for the range, then come to the Studio to design the wall for real.
Your Wall Is Waiting
Ten minutes from now you could be sliding the before/after across your own living room. Free, no account, no obligation — and if you love what you built, we're the crew that builds it.
START DESIGNING — FREE →